Dr. Marisa Randazzo, PhD

Dr. Marisa Randazzo is the Executive Director of Threat Management at Ontic. She leads strategic consulting and services to support the development of threat assessment protocols. Previously, she led SIGMA Threat Management Associates LLC as the Chief Executive Officer and Founder, covering threat assessment training and consulting operations as well as strategic initiatives, providing daily management and visionary leadership to all of SIGMA’s work. She is recognized internationally as an expert on threat assessment & threat management, school shootings and other types of targeted violence, and protective intelligence investigations. She also serves as Director of Threat Assessment for Georgetown University.

Dr. Randazzo served for ten years with the U.S. Secret Service, most recently as the agency’s Chief Research Psychologist. Among her various responsibilities, she co-directed the Safe School Initiative, the landmark federal study of school shootings conducted jointly by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Randazzo is an accomplished presenter and instructor on threat assessment investigations, having trained over 15,000 professionals in law enforcement, management, administration, mental health, and the intelligence community throughout the United States, Canada, and the European Union. Her research is used in the federal, state, and local law enforcement communities and has been credited in the media with preventing planned attacks.

She is co-author of two leading books on threat assessment: The Handbook for Campus Threat Assessment and Management Teams (2008) and Implementing Behavioral Threat Assessment on Campus: A Virginia Tech Demonstration Project (2009); both books are referenced as best-practice resources in several federal guides on emergency planning and in an American National Standard. Dr. Randazzo has testified before Congress and has been interviewed by major television, radio, and print news outlets, including 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, Nightline, Today, the Early Show, 48 Hours, Dateline NBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, Esquire Magazine, Redbook Magazine, and National Public Radio. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Threat Assessment & Management. She has also published under her maiden name, Marisa Reddy.

Dr. Randazzo received her Ph.D. and Master’s degree from Princeton University in Social Psychology, and a B.A. in Psychology and Religion from Williams College. Dr. Randazzo was awarded the Williams College Bicentennial Medal for her work in preventing violence and was recently honored as a Distinguished Alumna of the Spence School. Dr. Randazzo has served as a subject matter expert in testimony before Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, as a reviewer for the White House’s federal Guides to High Quality Emergency Plans (for schools, for higher education institutions, and for houses of worship), and as a member of the American Psychological Association’s Expert Panel on Preventing Gun Violence.