Biography
Jonathan brings deep expertise in campus safety public policy and community engagement. His experience includes identification and the leveraging of technology solutions to augment strategic implementation and oversight in an effective security operations program. He serves all kinds of institutions and their leaders, from small campuses to the Ivy League and complex systems, facilitating sustained organizational change as a senior executive consultant at CriticalArc.
Kassa is former executive director of Clery Center and led the survival and transformation of Clery Center's partnering with institutions of higher education. He was described as a “valuable leader in campus safety” in the 2008 (HR) Congressional Record and influenced federal legislation requiring Emergency Notification, hate and bias crime reporting, and amendments to the Violence Against Women Act. Jonathan was vice president for regulatory compliance at a national law firm where he helped clients to proactively address risk, implement program improvement plans, conduct internal audits, and assisted institutions of higher education facing U.S. Department of Education program reviews for Clery Act compliance, including experience as an independent federal monitor. At Allied Universal, he was an executive responsible for education vertical services, assessing and designing campus community public safety strategies.
He has taught graduate level public administration courses at Villanova University and also served as the inaugural executive director of ZeroNow and the National Council of School Security Directors, national nonprofit coalitions uniting education, technology, public safety experts and community stakeholders to operationalizing effective security and safety strategies for K-12 through Higher Education. He recently completed his second term as an elected school board director for one of Pennsylvania’s largest districts as chair of the Safe Schools committee and was selected as one of Life Safety Alliance's inaugural Top 40 Global Security Thought Leaders (2024).
