Margolis Healy & Associates

Margolis Healy & Associates, LLC, is a professional services firm specializing in higher education and K-12 safety and security. In January 2008, after more than 15 years each of providing consulting services to clients in the education, public and private sectors, Dr. Gary J. Margolis and Mr. Steven J. Healy merged their practices, Margolis & Associates, LLC and Strategic Security Consulting, LLC, into Margolis Healy & Associates, LLC.  Their combined experience has quickly catapulted MHA into one of the leading professional services firms for safety and security needs for K-12, universities and colleges.

Margolis Healy & Associates serves our clients through the development of a Risk Tolerance Profile that assists the institution with identifying the range of realistic threats and vulnerabilities it faces, and then implementing a decision making process to determine which require prevention, mitigation and/or response plans.  Without such a process, universities and colleges face the daunting task of giving equal attention to all perceived and real threats. Our process recognizes the range between high impact/low probability and low impact/high probability events.  The Active Shooter tragedy (high impact/low probability) and the iPod theft from the library (low impact/high probability) each require different strategies.  Impact is defined through the institution and the individual. 

Our team of professionals brings a diverse set of skills and expertise to client institutions ranging from large public universities to private institutions, community colleges and K-12 school districts. As active practitioners, we have on-going, first-hand experience in services we provide. Dr. Margolis, Mr. Healy and their team have personally managed or been intimately involved with scores of critical incidents on college campuses ranging from violent crime to natural disasters (including the 9/11 tragedy and its impact on the schools in NYC).  We help institutions of higher education and K-12 school districts develop and implement a threat assessment capacity that fits within their unique cultures and that is effective in both preventing violence and helping persons in need. We ensure that strategic security plans are meeting the unique needs the campus’ community.

MHA has developed a unique, proprietary methodology for evaluating safety and security needs at institutions of higher education and K-12 school systems based years of educational campus safety and security experience, reflection and evaluation. 

Mr. Healy and Dr. Margolis are the lead authors of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrator’s Blueprint for Safer Campuses: An Overview of the Virginia Tech Tragedy and Implications for Campus Safety.  This document, unveiled at a press conference sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University on April 18, 2008, is a roadmap for campus safety and security.  The Blueprint for Safer Campuses outlines the guiding principles for campus safety and security worldwide.

Shortly after the Virginia Tech incident, the President of The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, determined to establish an ad hoc Task Force on School and Campus Safety (Task Force) to consider what had transpired since the issuance of the previous NAAG report in 1999, including the incident at Virginia Tech, and issue a report making updated recommendations regarding the prevention of, and response to, violence in schools and on college campuses.  Mr. Healy participated in the development of this report, The National Association of Attorneys General Task Force on School and Campus Safety. 

MHA is uniquely poised to exceed your expectations on our services outlined herein.