Steve Di Rito: New Director of Risk Management is a Veteran Problem-Solver

Steve Di Rito, Colorado Academy’s new Director of Risk Management, is a safety and security professional’s professional. With both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Criminal Justice, he comes to CA with a track record that reads like an index to global crises of the past four decades.

Di Rito began his career in 1985 as an active-duty Security Forces Officer with the United States Air Force, leading the protection of conventional and nuclear weapon systems and managing more than 300 military police officers and other personnel in conflict areas around the world.

As a Special Agent in the FBI’s Denver Field Office from 1996-2004, he next investigated narcotics crimes, Russian criminal groups, and domestic and international terrorism across the West. He served as one of two FBI Evidence Response Team leaders in the aftermath of the Columbine High School mass shooting in 1999, and he led the Denver “Amerithrax” response—creating protocols to investigate thousands of “white powder” letters and packages sent to politicians and business leaders in the months following the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York.

After being called up to lead at the FBI’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, Di Rito served between 2004 and 2017 as a Supervisory Special Agent, Unit Chief, and member of the interagency team that drafted national policy for countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Among other high-profile assignments, he went to Afghanistan as the agency’s first Special Agent Bomb Technician there, developing new intelligence-gathering methods and training military personnel to detect, identify, and reduce casualties from IEDs in war zones. In 2013, as Chief of the National Explosives Task Force, Di Rito was the expert who directed the FBI’s intelligence analysis of the Boston Marathon Bombing explosions, determining that two individuals were involved and facilitating tracing the bombers’ movements.

Eight more years as a private-sector security executive in the finance and health care fields followed his distinguished three decades of service in the military and FBI. From Discover Financial Services to Texas Health Resources—a 4,390-bed healthcare organization—Di Rito developed comprehensive solutions to protect both C-level personnel traveling to overseas hotspots and hospital employees and patients facing a variety of dangers in the very places that were supposed to keep them well.

Indeed, throughout his long career, Di Rito has been the security leader to whom other leaders turn when existing systems and conventional ideas just aren’t good enough. Now, at CA, he may have traded in those high-profile, high-pressure roles for the more tranquil setting of the school’s South Pierce Street campus, but his focus and passion remain just the same.

“Everything I’ve ever done in my career, whether in Afghanistan or in a hospital in Texas,” he says, “has been about getting out in front of risk—understanding the risks of certain events, the risks in specific situations, and even the risks that individuals can pose. Our kids are like our nuclear weapons systems: We can’t afford to wait for something bad to happen to them.”

And being one step ahead of any given risk, Di Rito continues, means doggedly pursuing every bit of information and intelligence, closely analyzing systems for weak links, and deeply understanding the human factors in play—just like he’s done throughout his career. But most important of all, he notes, is empowering the people on security teams and within the communities they serve to be their own best protectors. 

“Safety and security aren’t things remote from us, in some other part of the country—they are right here, among our friends and colleagues and neighbors. The climate and culture we create together are our best defense. I’m just a vessel for that.”

Watershed moment

The Columbine High School massacre, Di Rito recalls, was a watershed moment both personal and professional. Not only did it upend his industry’s thinking about a new era of threats to school security, but it also shaped his own understanding of how caring for individuals and communities makes perhaps as big an impact on safety as any other factor.

“That was the first time I ever went to get mental health support after witnessing something on the job,” he notes. He had never before realized just how deep a toll such a tragedy could exact on those charged with responding.

Denver FBI personnel were at the high school to assist Jefferson County law enforcement with investigating possible additional threats, conducting witness interviews, and processing physical evidence. Di Rito directed a team that was documenting the scene outside the high school, where two of the 13 victims in the mass shooting were killed. 

However, with a team that included support staff and agents trained in processing gruesome crime scenes but unprepared to deal with violence against children, Di Rito wondered how he could prime them to face the disturbing aftermath they’d have to investigate. He took Polaroid photos of the victims to show his colleagues first, to give them some idea of what they’d encounter and help them mentally prepare for the task.

“There was no precedent for dealing with that kind of school shooting,” he notes, “and there was no way you could escape it: After working the scene for 14 or 16 hours, you’d come home and it would be on the television, the newspaper, the radio. I wasn’t eating or sleeping, and as I thought about my team who were there with me, I realized that they were likely feeling the same thing.”

Di Rito made sure that his investigators, like he did, were all able to debrief with a psychologist.

“Those are the kinds of lessons that stick with you,” he says.

See something, say something

In some ways, Di Rito goes on, coming to CA feels like a return, but “with 40 years of experience and knowledge” now under his belt. 

“We may be a small team,” he says, “but today we understand the tremendous resource we have in our own students, teachers, staff, and families. We all have to look out for each other.”

As a case in point, Di Rito recounts an incident that occurred on one of the first few days in his new role at CA. Lower School students who were walking with their class near Woody’s Pond told their teacher when they noticed something that looked “off”: an empty case that appeared to have held some kind of device or even a weapon. Di Rito and members of his Campus Safety & Security Team went to investigate and found something harmless, but certainly unusual: a waterfowl training kit for a hunting retriever.

“What those kids did is exactly right,” he explains, “and it’s the same thing I encourage anyone in the CA community to do. Someone saw something that didn’t look normal, so they brought it to the Security Team so we could research and identify it. Now that object is off the trail and won’t be mistaken for something dangerous again.”

Lower School Principal Angie Crabtree, notes Di Rito, provided invaluable assistance in communicating the reassuring news to Lower School students and teachers, as well as to worried family members who had heard about the discovery. And Crabtree’s language, he says, formed the basis for his own incident report about the find. 

“It’s circular—we all need each other. Just like everybody else on this campus, I’m here to serve not only the students, but their families, too.”

Di Rito continues, “I guess that’s something that I’ve really come to appreciate over the course of my career: working with people who care. On my first day, as I was meeting the faculty and staff, so many said to me, ‘We’re so glad you’re here!’ But I wanted to tell them, ‘You don’t understand—I’m the one who’s grateful to be here.’”

A meaningful difference

As he settles into the role of Director of Risk Management, Di Rito finds himself thinking about the next wins he hopes to see at the school—and some that may already be here.

Just a year ago, CA completed installation of a sophisticated, computer-controlled building access and video monitoring platform, Verkada, that secures the entire campus. The system, he says, comes with powerful automation and AI features of which we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. 

“Let’s say a truck speeds through our entrance gate without authorization. We can type ‘gray pickup’ into the system and keep track of that truck wherever it appears on our cameras.” It works just the same for suspicious individuals or anything else that might be out of place on campus. “I can circle an unknown individual on screen and click ‘Follow me’ to see everywhere that person’s been since they came in the gate.”

Encouraged by a recent all-school security audit and how it will inform an upcoming master-planning process, Di Rito’s looking forward to completing with his team a building-by-building risk assessment over the coming months. “I spent a good part of this week assessing the Leach Center for the Performing Arts,” he notes, “and am currently drafting some simple recommendations.”

The key question he and administrators are beginning to ask as a broader campus review and planning process gets underway is, “How do you make CA more secure without having us look and feel like a fortress?”

“I don’t know if I have all the answers today,” explains Di Rito, “but there are a lot of good options that can make a meaningful difference on campus and off.”

The biggest difference for this risk management veteran? Moving back to the Denver area, close to a daughter and grandchild. 

“Wow—how having a granddaughter sure changes things!” he exclaims. When he and his wife were thinking about relocating back to Colorado after years spent in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Minneapolis, and Dallas, and a friend told them about a house that was on the market in their old neighborhood in Lakewood, they snapped it up nearly sight unseen. 

“We weren’t really sure how it would all turn out, but once we found the house and Colorado Academy, it just felt right.”