844-337-7325 [email protected]
MICHAEL DORN
Executive Director of Safe Havens International
KEYNOTE VIDEOS
KEYNOTE FEE:

$5,001 - $7,500

Keynote fee falls within this range. For exact fee, please contact us.
TRAVELS FROM:

Georgia

Request Availability for Michael Dorn

"As one of our staff put it, learning school safety from Michael Dorn is like learning literature from William Shakespeare."

Superintendent

“Michael Dorn’s standing ovation keynote presentation was powerful. His extensive work with my school district and community has had a profound impact on the safety of children in Jones County Schools.”

Public Schools Police Department

“Michael was extremely attentive to our needs and the issues our conference attendees were facing. His keynote presentation was extremely powerful. Mike has a wonderful presentation style and held the audience attention every moment of his presentation. Mike’s sessions on school safety received very high ratings from participants. He was well prepared and organized. If it is important to your organization to have a presenter who is interested in what you do and customizes a presentation for your audience, Michael Dorn would be an excellent choice.”

President

“Michael’s ability to connect with students, faculty and staff is remarkable. His presentation conveys a caring, compassionate and sincere connection to every member of his audience. Michael’s concern for the safety of students is genuine. He is the best provider of inspiration and motivation that I have witnessed in my 30 years in education.”

Superintendent
ABOUT MICHAEL DORN

Michael Dorn serves as the Executive Director of Safe Havens International Inc., a non-profit school safety center whose analysts have worked in more than two dozen countries. Michael began his more than 41year career as a Mercer University police officer at the age of 18 and was rapidly promoted to corporal, sergeant and then lieutenant before being appointed as the Bibb County Georgia School System Police Chief at the age of 27. He was then appointed as the School Safety Specialist for the State of Georgia and later selected to serve as the State Anti-terrorism Planner and a few months later as the Lead Program Manager of the Terrorism Division of the Georgia Office of Homeland Security.  Michael was selected as the Senior Analyst for School Safety and Emergency Preparedness by Jane’s, the British intelligence, defense and security publisher after an international search.  Michael has provided post-incident assistance to law firms, school systems, faith-based schools, state agencies and insurance carriers for 23 active shooter and targeted school shooting incidents in K12 schools in the United States, Canada and Mexico.   Under his leadership, the 62 dedicated Safe Havens School Safety Analysts have assisted clients with school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness assessments for more than 8,500 K12 schools globally.

Michael’s work has taken him to Canada, India, Israel, Honduras, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Trinidad-Tobago, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Vietnam. Michael has authored and co-authored 28 books on school safety and public safety. His latest book is a 494-page higher education textbook Extreme Violence – Understanding & Protecting People from Active Assailants, Hate Crimes and Terrorist Attacks published in January 2021 by Cognella.  Michael co-authored the IS360 – Preparing for Mass Casualty Incidents: A Guide for Schools, Higher Education and Houses of Worship web course for the United States Department of Homeland Security as part of the 2013 White House School Safety Initiative. Michael has authored and co-authored hundreds of web courses, journal articles, magazine articles, blogs and columns for national and international publications and has appeared in several dozen school safety training videos.

Michael has provided expert witness services for some of the nation’s largest and most complex multi-million and even multi-billion-dollar school safety civil actions.  Michael has provided expert consultation on several of the nation’s most deadly active shooter incidents, mass victimization child abuse cases, school safety malpractice cases and a series of multi-district school safety federal civil actions filed by more than 200 school districts against JUUL and affiliate companies relating to addressing the damages caused by what the U.S. Surgeon General has classified as a public health epidemic.

Michael is regularly interviewed by national and international media organizations including ABC, the BBC, Canadian Television News, CBS, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, CNN Headline News, Dr. Phil, FOX News, Good Morning America, Huffington Post, the John Tesh Show, the London Times, Mother Jones, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Time Asia Edition, Univision, Tokyo Broadcasting the Wall Street Journal, 20/20 and Vietnam’s most widely published magazine – Bao Tuoi Tre.  Michael has appeared in live interviews for programs as diverse as Anderson Cooper 360, Al Jazeera America and Hannity.

A graduate of the 181st session of the FBI National Academy, Michael received advanced anti-terrorism training in Israel as a delegate with the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program and have provided training to two groups of ranking personnel from the Israel National Police.  Michael has captivated audiences of up to 3,500 people with his powerful and unforgettable presentations. Michael regularly keynotes major conferences such as the International Bullying Prevention Conference, The International Conference on Safe School Design, the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators Annual Conference in Quebec City, the First National School Violence Prevention Conference in Trinidad-Tobago and has lectured at Vietnam National University in Saigon.

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While other high school students were practicing for their driver’s license, Nicole was accumulating flight time. She was sixteen years old when she took her first solo flight and from that point on there was no stopping her. While in high school, she joined the Civil Air Patrol and participated in Air Force Junior ROTC. Nicole’s professional story began when she earned her commission from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996. Following graduation, she attended Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) at Columbus AFB, MS and began her career as a pilot. Competitively selected to fly combat aircraft, she was among the first group of women to fly modern fighter aircraft. As a career pilot, she served in combat as an F-15E Flight Commander, Evaluator, Instructor Pilot and Flight Lead. Over her 21-year career, Nicole achieved the rating of Command Pilot with over 2,300 flight hours in six different Air Force aircraft. She was also selected to fly as Thunderbird #3 with the USAF Air Demonstration Squadron – the first woman to fly on any Department of Defense military jet demonstration squadron. Colonel Malachowski has served as a mission ready fighter pilot in three operational F-15E fighter squadrons and has flown over 188 combat hours, including her proudest moment as a fighter pilot: leading the first fighter formation to provide security for Iraq’s historic democratic elections in 2005.

On the ground, Nicole was a White House Fellow, class of 2008-2009, where she served on the Presidential Transition Support Team (PTST) while assigned to the U.S. General Services Administration. The White House Fellows Foundation and Association awarded Nicole the 2019 IMPACT Award for demonstrating both remarkable achievement and transformational contributions in her field, as well as a sustained commitment to the White House Fellows program. Nicole also served two high-level staff assignments at the Pentagon – one in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD P&R) as well as the Secretary of the Air Force Office of International Affairs (SAF/IA). She also served as the Executive Director of the White House’s national ‘Joining Forces’ initiative where she directly advised former First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden on all topics relating to service members, veterans, and military families to include employment, education, mental health, veterans’ homelessness and more.

Nicole’s operational F-15E assignments include two tours of duty at RAF Lakenheath, United Kingdom as well as one operational assignment to Seymour Johnson AFB, NC. She has also served alongside the United States Army 2nd Infantry Division, Camp Red Cloud, Republic of Korea, as an Air Liaison Officer. During her second assignment to Seymour Johnson AFB, NC, she had the honor of commanding the 333rd Fighter Squadron, leading an elite cadre of F-15E Instructors in the training of the next generation of combat aviators. Further, she was responsible for resources totaling over $1.1B and the execution of a $119M annual flying hour program.

Nicole earned a Master of Arts, with honors, in National Security Policy from American Military University and a second Master of Arts, with highest distinction, in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College. While there, she earned the Admiral Stephen B. Luce Award as the class honor graduate, the first Air Force officer in the history of the Naval War College to do so. Nicole has been recognized with several honors for her consistent contributions to community service. As Nicole continues to recover from her neurological tick-borne illness, she embraces any opportunity to educate others about her medical journey and gains energy from educating others about this growing epidemic. She is on the Board of Directors at the LivLyme Foundation and is a Patient Advisory Board Member of The Dean Center for Tick Borne Illness.

Colonel Nicole Malachowski, USAF (Ret.) was born in Santa Maria, CA and graduated high school in Las Vegas, NV. She and her husband Paul have twin children; son Garrick and daughter Norah. Paul is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and former F-15E Evaluator Weapons Systems Officer.

MICHAEL DORN PROGRAMS & TOPICS

School Safety Fidelity – Reducing Gaps Between Perceptions and Reality

This dynamic and thought-provoking session includes practical, powerful no-cost and low-cost concepts that can be utilized to prevent and prepare for a wide array of school and school bus crisis events. The session is based on the presenter’s experience providing post-incident assistance for 21 K-12 active shooter and targeted school shootings, a terrorist attack targeting students, parents and staff on a Christian school field trip in Kenya and several hundred other school and school bus crisis events. The session will also demonstrate how to detect and correct the deadly types of training scars that have resulted in catastrophic failure of popular concepts such as “Run, Hide, Fight,” commercial active shooter training programs, standardized emergency protocols, emergency phone notification apps, and other popular but problematic approaches.

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With more than $130 million paid in out of court settlements by law enforcement agencies and school districts where popular but unsound active shooter training programs have contributed to or caused serious injuries and deaths of students and school employees. This unforgettable presentation will include video and audio school crisis scenarios, pictures and stories to help participants identify patterns of safety gaps noted by the presenter and his team of Safe Havens analysts across the United States and overseas.

Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters

Based on the two most recent books the presenter co-authored, Extreme Violence, Understanding and Protecting People from Active Assailants, Hate Crimes & Terrorist Attacks (published by Cognella) and Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters (published by Barron’s), this dynamic session will outline research-based approaches to the prevention of violent incidents and proven concepts to improve the speed and effectiveness of life and death decision-making. This session is based on the results of more than 8,000 one-on-one controlled real-time simulations using audio and video school crisis scenarios and the findings from the extensive research of more than 2,300 attacks globally by the co-authors for the two books to address acts of mass casualty violence.

Read More

This session will help educational organizations avoid the catastrophic failures, successful litigation, reputation damage, operational disruption and trauma that have resulted from extremely popular approaches which have preventable flaws in concept or application. This session will focus on proven concepts that can be implemented and validated by fidelity testing using easy to develop audio scenarios in schools and school systems of any size. The session will also draw on the presenter’s post-incident assistance and litigation support provided for 21 active shooter and targeted school shooting incidents in the United States and Canada. The session will also draw on his work co-authoring eight active assailant prevention and preparedness web courses, including the United States Department of Homeland Security’s IS-360: Preparing for Mass Casualty Incidents: A Guide for Schools, Higher Education, and Houses of Worship web training program for schools, institutions of higher learning and places of worship. The presenter will also rely on his work in eleven countries, including the security assessment for a Christian school ranked by the U.S. State Department as the number one soft target for terrorist attack in the national assessment conducted after the deadly Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya. This session will emphasize tangible and practical real-world action steps to make school, places of worship and other settings safer. 

Active Shooter and Beyond – Preventing and Preparing for Active Assailant and Terrorist Events

This session will include practical, powerful and no to low-cost concepts that can be utilized to enhance survivability for active assailant and terrorist events as well as for the most common types of violent deaths in the campus setting. The session will also provide cautions regarding people who have been seriously injured and killed due to popular but potentially deadly active shooter training approaches. This session is based on the latest books the presenter co-authored, a 494-page university textbook Extreme Violence, Understanding and Protecting People from Active Assailants, Hate Crimes & Terrorist Attacks and Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters as well as his experience providing post-incident assistance for 21 active assailant and targeted shootings in U.S. and Canadian K12 schools.

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This powerful and dynamic presentation will include important concepts to help schools prevent and prepare for a wide variety of types of extreme violence events. The session will also provide concepts to help school address the types of single-victim shootings, edged weapons assaults and suicides that are far more common in schools but receive little national media attention.

Innocent Targets – When Terrorism Comes to School

This practical and fact-based presentation is based on the presenter’s extensive research, formal training and full-time state government homeland security experience. Using his considerable international experience working with public and faith-based schools at high risk for terrorism in the United States, India, Kenya and Trinidad-Tobago, this session will provide practical strategies and takeaways for participants that can be tailored to fit schools of any size.  As a few examples, the presenter has conducted school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness assessments for all of the Jewish Day schools in the greater Boston area, a Christian School in Nairobi identified as the number one soft target for terrorism by the U.S. State Department, schools attended by potential targets of famous people such as the daughter of the president of Mexico, the grandson of President Donald Trump and the children of Tiger Woods.

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This session will help dispel the alarmist disinformation so prevalent in our society regarding this frightening and emotional topic.  The session will review the six school and school bus terrorism incidents that have occurred in the United States while providing practical antiterrorism actions steps to help schools and their public safety partners enhance current efforts.  Based on the book that is the standard reference guide on the topic for universities as well as state and federal government homeland security agencies, this session will help schools and law enforcement agencies focus their prevention and response measures more effectively.

What is Your Good Name Worth? School Safety, Security and Emergency Preparedness for Independent Schools

This thought-provoking presentation is filled with practical and easy to implement strategies that are designed for the unique environments of military academies, private, charter, boarding, international, faith based and independent K12 schools.  This session will draw from the presenter’s extensive experience conducting school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness assessment for non-public schools in more than three dozen states, India, Kenya and Vietnam.  Information learned from the presenter’s experience serving as an expert witness during major litigation involving alleged safety incidents at non-public and charter schools will help participants learn how to reduce the actual levels of risk, potential trauma along with the resulting potential for reputation risk and major litigation that can be incredibly damaging to non-public and charter schools.

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This session covers assessment-based approaches that can be utilized to help improve safety, security and emergency preparedness while also enhancing school climate, culture and reputation.  The session will address the increased civil liability and reputation risk exposure for non-public schools which lack the protection of limited governmental immunity that public schools have in most regions. This presentation examines how efforts to provide a safe and secure environment can not only protect students and staff from harm but the good name that is so important to non-public schools.  

Evaluation and Management of Anonymous Threats of School Violence – Practical and Flexible Approaches

This session utilizes the information the presenter learned during his nearly four decades in the field as well as from 14 days of intensive antiterrorism briefings he received in Israel by the Israel National Police, The Israel Defense Forces and Israeli intelligence agencies.  The presentation will also draw on the presenter’s experience as a technical advisor for development of an interactive CD on school bomb threat management for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives. This session will focus on developing approaches to school threats that are practical, flexible and realistic for the school setting. Approaches covered will be designed to address false threats, past school bombings and suicide bombings at U.S. schools, acts of school and school terrorism and combination attacks involving other attack methodologies such as fire, chemical agents, acid “dosing” attacks, vehicle ramming, mass-casualty edged weapons assaults and firearms.

The Last Straw – Warning Signs of Destructive Youth Behaviors and Multidisciplinary Threat Assessment

Taught from a practitioner’s viewpoint for practitioners, this practical session outlines the early and imminent warning signs of destructive youth behaviors, intervention techniques and the productive concept of multidisciplinary threat assessment developed by the presenter and his colleagues in a Georgia public school system where they were utilized to successfully avert a number of planned school shootings, a planned middle school bombing and a planned double suicide in the early 1990’s.  This session is focused on the strategic approaches to the development, implementation and fidelity testing of threat assessment and management approaches rather than providing a step-by-step process.

Request Availability for Michael Dorn

MICHAEL DORN BOOKS
MICHAEL DORN
Executive Director of Safe Havens International
TRAVELS FROM:

Georgia
KEYNOTE FEE:

$5,001 - $7,500

Keynote fee falls within this range. For exact fee, please contact us.
KEYNOTE VIDEOS
"As one of our staff put it, learning school safety from Michael Dorn is like learning literature from William Shakespeare."
Superintendent

Burke County, NC Public Schools

“Michael Dorn’s standing ovation keynote presentation was powerful. His extensive work with my school district and community has had a profound impact on the safety of children in Jones County Schools.”
Public Schools Police Department

Jones County North Carolina

“Michael was extremely attentive to our needs and the issues our conference attendees were facing. His keynote presentation was extremely powerful. Mike has a wonderful presentation style and held the audience attention every moment of his presentation. Mike’s sessions on school safety received very high ratings from participants. He was well prepared and organized. If it is important to your organization to have a presenter who is interested in what you do and customizes a presentation for your audience, Michael Dorn would be an excellent choice.”
President

Crisis Prevention Institute, Inc.

“Michael’s ability to connect with students, faculty and staff is remarkable. His presentation conveys a caring, compassionate and sincere connection to every member of his audience. Michael’s concern for the safety of students is genuine. He is the best provider of inspiration and motivation that I have witnessed in my 30 years in education.”
Superintendent

The Greater Jasper Schools Corporation

ABOUT MICHAEL DORN

Michael Dorn serves as the Executive Director of Safe Havens International Inc., a non-profit school safety center whose analysts have worked in more than two dozen countries. Michael began his more than 41year career as a Mercer University police officer at the age of 18 and was rapidly promoted to corporal, sergeant and then lieutenant before being appointed as the Bibb County Georgia School System Police Chief at the age of 27. He was then appointed as the School Safety Specialist for the State of Georgia and later selected to serve as the State Anti-terrorism Planner and a few months later as the Lead Program Manager of the Terrorism Division of the Georgia Office of Homeland Security.  Michael was selected as the Senior Analyst for School Safety and Emergency Preparedness by Jane’s, the British intelligence, defense and security publisher after an international search.  Michael has provided post-incident assistance to law firms, school systems, faith-based schools, state agencies and insurance carriers for 23 active shooter and targeted school shooting incidents in K12 schools in the United States, Canada and Mexico.   Under his leadership, the 62 dedicated Safe Havens School Safety Analysts have assisted clients with school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness assessments for more than 8,500 K12 schools globally.

Michael’s work has taken him to Canada, India, Israel, Honduras, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Trinidad-Tobago, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Vietnam. Michael has authored and co-authored 28 books on school safety and public safety. His latest book is a 494-page higher education textbook Extreme Violence – Understanding & Protecting People from Active Assailants, Hate Crimes and Terrorist Attacks published in January 2021 by Cognella.  Michael co-authored the IS360 – Preparing for Mass Casualty Incidents: A Guide for Schools, Higher Education and Houses of Worship web course for the United States Department of Homeland Security as part of the 2013 White House School Safety Initiative. Michael has authored and co-authored hundreds of web courses, journal articles, magazine articles, blogs and columns for national and international publications and has appeared in several dozen school safety training videos. 

Read More

Michael has provided expert witness services for some of the nation’s largest and most complex multi-million and even multi-billion-dollar school safety civil actions.  Michael has provided expert consultation on several of the nation’s most deadly active shooter incidents, mass victimization child abuse cases, school safety malpractice cases and a series of multi-district school safety federal civil actions filed by more than 200 school districts against JUUL and affiliate companies relating to addressing the damages caused by what the U.S. Surgeon General has classified as a public health epidemic.  

Michael is regularly interviewed by national and international media organizations including ABC, the BBC, Canadian Television News, CBS, Christian Science Monitor, CNN, CNN Headline News, Dr. Phil, FOX News, Good Morning America, Huffington Post, the John Tesh Show, the London Times, Mother Jones, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Time Asia Edition, Univision, Tokyo Broadcasting the Wall Street Journal, 20/20 and Vietnam’s most widely published magazine – Bao Tuoi Tre.  Michael has appeared in live interviews for programs as diverse as Anderson Cooper 360, Al Jazeera America and Hannity.

A graduate of the 181st session of the FBI National Academy, Michael received advanced anti-terrorism training in Israel as a delegate with the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program and have provided training to two groups of ranking personnel from the Israel National Police.  Michael has captivated audiences of up to 3,500 people with his powerful and unforgettable presentations. Michael regularly keynotes major conferences such as the International Bullying Prevention Conference, The International Conference on Safe School Design, the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators Annual Conference in Quebec City, the First National School Violence Prevention Conference in Trinidad-Tobago and has lectured at Vietnam National University in Saigon.

MICHAEL DORN PROGRAMS & TOPICS
School Safety Fidelity – Reducing Gaps Between Perceptions and Reality
This dynamic and thought-provoking session includes practical, powerful no-cost and low-cost concepts that can be utilized to prevent and prepare for a wide array of school and school bus crisis events. The session will also demonstrate how to detect and correct the deadly types of training scars that have resulted in catastrophic failure of popular concepts such as “Run, Hide, Fight,” commercial active shooter training programs, standardized emergency protocols, emergency phone notification apps, and other popular but problematic approaches.
Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters
This dynamic session will outline research-based approaches to the prevention of violent incidents and proven concepts to improve the speed and effectiveness of life and death decision-making. This session is based on the results of more than 8,000 one-on-one controlled real-time simulations using audio and video school crisis scenarios and the findings from the extensive research of more than 2,300 attacks globally by the co-authors for the two books to address acts of mass casualty violence.
Active Shooter and Beyond – Preventing and Preparing for Active Assailant and Terrorist Events
This session will include practical, powerful and no to low-cost concepts that can be utilized to enhance survivability for active assailant and terrorist events as well as for the most common types of violent deaths in the campus setting. The session will also provide cautions regarding people who have been seriously injured and killed due to popular but potentially deadly active shooter training approaches.
Innocent Targets – When Terrorism Comes to School
This practical and fact-based presentation is based on the presenter’s extensive research, formal training and full-time state government homeland security experience. Using his considerable international experience working with public and faith-based schools at high risk for terrorism in the United States, India, Kenya and Trinidad-Tobago, this session will provide practical strategies and takeaways for participants that can be tailored to fit schools of any size.
What is Your Good Name Worth? School Safety, Security and Emergency Preparedness for Independent Schools

This thought-provoking presentation is filled with practical and easy to implement strategies that are designed for the unique environments of military academies, private, charter, boarding, international, faith based and independent K12 schools.  This session will draw from the presenter’s extensive experience conducting school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness assessment for non-public schools in more than three dozen states, India, Kenya and Vietnam. 

Evaluation and Management of Anonymous Threats of School Violence – Practical and Flexible Approaches

This session utilizes the information the presenter learned during his nearly four decades in the field as well as from 14 days of intensive antiterrorism briefings he received in Israel by the Israel National Police, The Israel Defense Forces and Israeli intelligence agencies.  The presentation will also draw on the presenter’s experience as a technical advisor for development of an interactive CD on school bomb threat management for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives.

The Last Straw – Warning Signs of Destructive Youth Behaviors and Multidisciplinary Threat Assessment

Taught from a practitioner’s viewpoint for practitioners, this practical session outlines the early and imminent warning signs of destructive youth behaviors, intervention techniques and the productive concept of multidisciplinary threat assessment developed by the presenter and his colleagues in a Georgia public school system where they were utilized to successfully avert a number of planned school shootings, a planned middle school bombing and a planned double suicide in the early 1990’s.

Know the Drill – Safe and Effective School Emergency Operations Exercises

Untested school safety plans are sound only in theory and significant plan failure has often occurred in major school crisis where unrealistic confidence in plans had not been properly tested through several types of exercises. The presenter will describe how a variety of simple and highly effective drill processes tailored to the K12 setting. Of considerable importance, attendees will learn how they can develop and use their own customized scripted and audio scenarios to conduct “one-on-one” fidelity testing of their emergency plans and drill prompts to identify and correct gaps in the plans.

Request Availability for Michael Dorn

MICHAEL DORN BOOKS