Michael Dorn
Executive Director
Safe Havens International

Executive Director Michael Dorn is one of the most respected, widely recognized, highly credentialed, and trusted school safety experts in the world. During his campus safety career of more than forty years, Michael’s work has taken him to numerous regions including Mexico, Honduras, Canada, Vietnam the U.K., Kenya, South Africa, Israel, and Mozambique. Michael has coordinated school safety security, climate, culture, and emergency preparedness assessments for more than 8,000 public, charter, faith-based, boarding, independent schools in a dozen countries. Michael has provided post-incident assistance for more than 300 school crisis events including assistance to law firms, school systems, state agencies, and insurance carriers for twenty active shooter and targeted school shooting incidents in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As but two examples of the types of incidents he has been called to provide assistance for, Michael led the team of 23 SHI Analysts who conducted the school safety, security, climate, culture, and emergency preparedness assessment of 254 schools and support facilities for the Broward County Public School System in the wake of the February 14, 2018, attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida. Michael also served as the project lead for a security assessment for an independent Christian school in Nairobi, Kenya after the school was ranked as the number one soft target for terrorism in Kenya by the U.S. State Department. Following the deadly West Gate Mall attack. Published by four major publishing houses, Michael has authored and co-authored 27 books on school safety including Innocent Targets – When Terrorism Comes to School, the peer-reviewed 450 page Jane’s Safe Schools Planning Guide for All Hazards and Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters which was released by Barron’s in May of 2014. Michael is a co-author of a 600-page university textbook Extreme Violence: Understanding and Protecting People from Active Assailants, Hate Crimes, and Terrorist Attacks released by Cognella in January 2021. Michael has also authored hundreds of articles and columns for national publications including School Planning and Management, Campus Safety, Today’s School, School Transportation News, and College Planning and Management magazines.

Michael served on the authoring team for the IS 360: Preparing for Mass Casualty Incidents: A Guide for Schools, Higher Education, and Houses of Worship training program focused on active shooter incident prevention and preparedness for the United States Department of Homeland Security as part of the 2013 White House School Safety Initiative. Michael has also co-authored more than two dozen nationally distributed school safety web courses with seven of those courses being specific to active shooter events. He is currently co-authoring six courses on terrorism and has appeared in dozens of school safety training videos.