Dr. Sharon Cooper is the Founder of the MACE Foundation and CEO of Developmental & Forensic Pediatrics, P.A., a consulting firm providing medical care, research, training and expert witness experience in child maltreatment cases as well as children with developmental disabilities.

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As a developmental pediatrician, Dr. Cooper has watched over mothers and babies for almost five decades. Through the MACE Foundation, she is committed to promoting ACEs protective factors as a public health initiative so that the adversities of life don’t prevent mothers from keeping their eyes on the prize, which is the healthy development of their children.  As for the mothers themselves, Dr. Cooper wants to provide complementary talks, trainings and other resources to help foster a sense of well-being, joy, hope and empowerment.  She desires to provide mothers with the tools they need to develop their capacity and ability to make life better--and even best--for their children.

Dr. Cooper holds faculty positions at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. She served for 15 years as a consultant and board member for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) where she has taught thousands of professionals regarding child sexual exploitation and the victim impact of sexually abusive images of children in cyberspace.  

Dr. Cooper has lectured both nationally and internationally in well over 300 conferences, including many federal justice agencies, the National Judicial College, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and INTERPOL.  Recently, she provided extensive training to INHOPE members who work in more than 43 countries which have hotlines for reporting and rescuing child victims of sexual exploitation.  She has served as a lecturer and past board member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and is a board member of the Academy on Violence and Abuse and the United Kingdom Marie Collins Foundation (which promotes best practices in the identification and treatment of child sexual exploitation victims).  She holds advisory positions on Boards of Directors of the Boys Scouts of America, ConnectSafely.org (an award winning Internet safety organization), ECPAT-USA, the Working Group on Child Dignity in the Digital World sponsored by the Vatican, the Canadian Center for Child Protection and, most recently, as a commissioner to the University of Pennsylvania nonprofit CHILD USA “Game Over: Commission to Protect Young Athletes.”   

Dr. Cooper is the lead author of two comprehensive texts on the medical, legal and social science aspects of child sexual exploitation and has contributed many chapters to other texts on this subject.  She co-authored Perspectives on Missing Persons Cases, which explores the numerous ways that persons become missing to include as victims of sex trafficking. She also authored the chapter on child sexual exploitation for the INTERPOL Investigative Manual. She has testified before the United States Congress, the Russian Duma (Parliament), the European Commission, the Manitoba Legislature and the Italian Senate.  

Dr. Cooper has evaluated numerous victims of sex trafficking and other forms of sexual exploitation and served on the Task Force on Sex Trafficking victimization sponsored by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.  

Dr. Cooper was appointed by the former Attorney General of the United States, the Honorable Eric Holder to serve on the Defending Childhood Children Exposed to Violence National Task Force.  She is presently a member of a bipartisan Homeland Security Advisory Council on Children and Families which is preparing a national report for the Secretary of Customs and Border Protection regarding migrating populations from the Northern Triangle.  

Dr. Cooper is a veteran of the Armed Forces of the United States and served 21 years in the US Army, retiring as a Colonel.  She is also a classically-trained pianist.