Katherine Schweit

Katherine Schweit is an author, attorney, former Chicago prosecutor, and career Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who authored Stop the Killing: How to End the Mass Shooting Crisis and How to Talk About Guns With Anyone. She is a founding member of the Bureau Consortium, bringing the best skills together in violence prevention, and runs her own security consulting firm, Schweit Consulting LLC. She provides analysis to print, radio, network, and streaming services on issues related to mass shootings, active shooters, threat assessments, school and business security, law enforcement matters, critical incidents, crisis communications, and other security-related matters.

While an FBI agent in FBI Headquarters, 20 children and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Katherine was tapped to join a newly-created violence prevention team with then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office. There, she worked with other executives from federal agencies, gathering best practices from federal and private industry experts, nationally and internationally. She was part of the crisis team responding to incidents, including the shootings at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Pentagon, and the Navy Yard in the Washington D.C. area.

She wrote the FBI’s seminal research, A Study of 160 Active Shooter Incident in the United States, 2000 – 2013. This benchmark study was the first research conducted using law enforcement reports. Her access to survivors and first responders guided her role as executive producer of the award-winning dramatic film and documentary, The Coming Storm; a depiction of how to prepare for what happens after a shooting. At its premier at the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police convention, then-FBI Director James B. Comey called the film “the most important training available to law enforcement today.” The film for security and law enforcement training in the United States and relied on by the Department of State worldwide.

She is the former director for security training for a Fortune 300 company, and a member of DePaul University College of Law’s adjunct faculty, teaching courses in the culture of the Second Amendment and the rules of evidence. At Webster University, Schweit teaches courses in business and cyber law and policy. As a expert resource for the federally funded National Center for School Safety, her expertise in school safety supports the University of Michigan-led effort to provide extensive, free resources to school administrators, teachers, parents, and school resource officers.

A native of Detroit, Schweit earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University and wrote for daily newspapers in Michigan and Chicago. She earned state and national writing recognition, including a Peter Lisagor Award for her 1990 analysis of discipline meted to judges and attorneys by the Illinois Supreme Court after one of the largest FBI public corruption investigations ever conducted. Today, she lives in Northern Virginia, outside of Washington D.C.

She earned her law degree at DePaul University, College of Law, after joining the Cook County prosecutor’s office as an assistant state’s attorney.