With more than 35 years’ experience, Anne E. Schwartz is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist, author, and internationally recognized trainer and advisor on strategic communication and public relations practices for Police, Fire, EMS, Prosecutors, and others in Criminal Justice and Public Safety. With hundreds of presentations and training sessions internationally, Anne has a unique background in how to manage communications in a variety of scenarios.

 

She partners with the U.S. Department of State International Narcotics and Law Enforcement section, Department of Justice, American Bar Association, and the National Association of Attorneys General to share communications best practices with legal professionals in the U.S. and abroad. She recently returned from Armenia where she provided training to the Chamber of Advocates on best practices in communications.

 

In 2018, she completed her second deployment to North Macedonia, where she provided training in strategic communication for prosecutors and judges. She helped establish the public information office for the Office of the Special Prosecutor in North Macedonia in 2015, which has become a model for other sectors of the government. At the embassy’s request, she returned to provide training for all prosecutors and judges. She has provided training for prosecutors and judges from Bosnia, Lebanon, and Uzbekistan through the ABA Rule of Law Initiative. She provides communications/media training for law enforcement for the Wisconsin DOJ and she is an adjunct professor in strategic communications at the National Criminal Justice Training Center at Fox Valley Technical College. She provides emergency management communications to Police, EMS and Fire personnel throughout the U.S.

 

Prior to embarking on a full-time teaching and consulting career, as Communications Director for the Wisconsin DOJ, Anne led the team that developed an award-winning public service campaign, “Dose of Reality,” to create awareness of prescription opiate abuse. She received a national Telly Award in 2016. The program continues today and has been replicated by attorneys general in six states. At the Milwaukee Police Department, she developed MPD’s Office of Media & Communications and served as its commander for nearly a decade. She received a national Webby award in 2013 in the Government category for creating and developing MPD’s website, a project that led the way for other law enforcement agencies to communicate by building their own sites and employing social media.

 

In 1991, as a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal newspaper, she broke the story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and wrote the book, “The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: The Story of Milwaukee’s Jeffrey Dahmer.” Schwartz and the reporting team were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The book was later made into a movie.

 

She co-authored, "Strategic Approaches to Improve Communications Initiative: A White Paper for Law Enforcement Executives" and “Strategic Communication: A Toolkit for Police Executives” for the U.S. DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). She subsequently provided training to police executives nationwide and in Canada on the strategies outlined in the publications.

 

Anne volunteers for the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Death Response Team (LEDR), assisting police agencies and families with external and internal communication in cases of officer line of duty deaths and suicides.