Executive Profile
About Dr. Ishmael Kwawununu
Leadership in Public Safety, Emergency Management, Enterprise Risk, and Organizational Resilience
Dr. Ishmael Kwawununu is an executive leader in public safety, emergency management, enterprise risk, and organizational resilience. He is known for turning frontline operational realities into executive strategy. He serves as Deputy Chief of Public Safety at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, where he helps lead a complex public safety organization protecting a dynamic campus in the heart of Manhattan.
His portfolio covers the full range of institutional protection: operational command, emergency preparedness, sensitive investigations, major-event and protest response, labor-aware workforce management, training, policy implementation, technology modernization, budget and staffing analysis, and executive reporting to senior leadership. His work rests on fairness, evidence, procedural integrity, and decisive corrective action.
Scholarship
& Leadership
A scholar-practitioner, Dr. Kwawununu holds a doctorate in Civil Security Leadership and Policy Management from Kean University–Jersey City. His research focused on intelligence, national and international disaster management, resilience, and risk mitigation, and his dissertation examined rural-urban migration and flood disaster vulnerability in Accra, Ghana. He also holds a Master of Public Administration in Disaster and Emergency Management from Metropolitan College of New York and a Bachelor of Science in Emergency and Disaster Management from Empire State University. He completed executive education at Harvard Kennedy School. He is board-certified by ASIS International as a Professional Certified Investigator (PCI) and Physical Security Professional (PSP), is pursuing the Certified Protection Professional (CPP) designation, and holds FEMA Incident Command System certifications through ICS-800.
On the international stage, Dr. Kwawununu advises and speaks for higher education, government agencies, nonprofits, corporations, and multilateral institutions seeking stronger leadership, preparedness, and resilience. As Strategic Adviser on Africa–U.S. Security and Governance, he advises on cross-border partnerships, governance, and security cooperation. He is also an agricultural investor in Africa and The Bahamas.
Philanthropy & Community Impact
Dr. Kwawununu is also the Executive Board Chair of the I AM HERe Scholarship, a Ghana-based initiative that serves high-achieving young women from low-income families at Keta Senior High Technical School his alma mater. The program works to remove barriers to their academic success and to advance gender equality in Science, Business, and the Arts. Guided by the principle of “Sankofa”, it provides financial support, mentorship, and career planning, and it asks each scholar to give back by tutoring the students who follow right after.
