Monica Lewinsky's new mission is to stop cyber bullying, which she announced yesterday at Forbes' inaurgual 30-Under-30 summit in Philadelphia.
"I was Patient Zero," she said. "The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet."
Lewinsky was referring to the online entertainment websites in 1995 who picked up on the story of her affair with President Bill Clinton while she was a 22-year-old intern.
"Staring at the computer screen, I spent the day shouting: 'oh my god!' and 'I can't believe they put that in' or 'That's so out of context,'" she said at the summit. "And those were the only thoughts that interrupted a relentless mantra in my head: 'I want to die.'"
After the incident blew up online, Lewinsky was bouncing around trying to find her place in the world. She tried capitalizing on her notoriety by designing handbags and hosting a reality show on dating, reports Forbes. She later moved to the U.K. to get her Master's degree in social psychology at London's School of Economics.
However, Lewinsky didn't discover her true calling until 2010 when she heard on the news a story about the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi who jumped off the George Washington bridge after his roommate secretly took and posted a video online of him kissing another man.
"Having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame game survive, too," Lewinsky said at the summit. "I want to put my suffering to good use and give purpose to my past."
