Heather Dark serves as President & COO for the NCPTF.
Heather Dark serves as President & Chief Operating Officer of the National Child Protection Task Force, where she leads organizational strategy, operations, and growth as NCPTF expands its work to create better outcomes for missing, exploited, and trafficked children across the country. Her commitment to this work is rooted in longstanding advocacy for youth experiencing homelessness, abuse, and exploitation. Heather brings more than 15 years of experience helping organizations navigate growth, complexity, and change with greater clarity and discipline.
Heather joined NCPTF as a volunteer in 2022 and became the organization’s first Chief Communications Officer in 2023. She authored NCPTF’s first strategic plan and helped lead a defining organizational transformation—clarifying the mission, retiring legacy programs, strengthening operations, and concentrating resources around the work where NCPTF could have the greatest impact.
Promoted to Chief Strategy Officer in 2024 and later Chief Operating Officer, Heather helped develop and operationalize NCPTF’s Missing Child Rescue Operations and built the expansion strategy and organizational capacity behind their growth. The multidisciplinary model strengthens law enforcement-led investigations with specialized expertise, technology, child advocacy, and operational support and has helped locate more than 200 endangered missing children since its launch in 2024.
Now, as President & COO, Heather serves as the CEO’s primary executive partner and leads the internal organization behind NCPTF’s mission—aligning strategy, leaders, resources, and systems so growth translates into stronger execution and sustainable impact. Her focus is developing leaders, building organizational capacity, strengthening strategic partnerships, and creating the infrastructure needed to serve more children and communities well.
Heather’s work is grounded in the belief that being found should be the beginning of something better. That means listening closely, building stronger support around vulnerable youth, and strengthening the people and systems responsible for protecting them.
