Meet Marie!

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**Trigger warning: Content discusses childhood abuse**

Marie Striebel is a survivor of child sex trafficking, a leader, and the founder of The Empowered Child Alliance Inc. (TECA), an organization dedicated to child exploitation prevention. TECA's mission is to end child sex trafficking by empowering children with the knowledge and understanding needed to protect themselves and confronting its root cause: the cycle of unhealed trauma that fuels demand.

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Marie’s life began in survival. After being uprooted to the United States as a child, she found herself in environments where she was unseen, unprotected, and ultimately exploited. By the age of 13, she was trafficked—sold, controlled, and used repeatedly, her identity stripped away before she ever had the chance to form one.

She didn’t just witness the system—she lived inside it.

Marie knows what it looks like behind closed doors. She understands how easily a child can fall through the cracks. And she recognizes that trafficking doesn’t start with traffickers—it begins much earlier.

Marie escaped—but the impact didn’t end there.

Like many survivors, she spent decades navigating the aftermath—living without boundaries, disconnected from her own worth, and repeating patterns rooted in trauma she didn’t yet understand. From the outside, she built a successful career, rising into executive leadership in the automotive industry—breaking barriers in one of the most male-dominated fields. But internally, she was still fighting battles no one could see.

Until she chose to face it.

Through deep personal work, Marie began to understand the full scope of what had happened to her—not just the abuse, but the cycle behind it. That understanding became her purpose.

Today, through The Empowered Child Alliance (TECA), Marie is focused on disrupting that cycle at its source. Her work challenges the conventional narrative by addressing the uncomfortable truth: the demand for child exploitation is often rooted in untreated trauma. She advocates for prevention through education, early intervention, and healing—before harm is ever passed on to another child.

Marie doesn’t speak from theory. She speaks from experience most people will never understand—and many don’t want to face.

And she refuses to stay silent, because silence is where this cycle survives.