Paul L. Wertheimer — Crowd Management Strategies

Rolling Stone called Crowd Management Strategies "a leading concert-safety consulting firm.” And Vanity Fair's William Langewiesche in his article, Stampede, called Paul "the leading crowd specialist in the United States...with a fine sense of realities." John Seabrook blogging about his award-winning New Yorker article, Crush Point, wrote “Paul's a hero." While John Fruin, PhD, author of the preeminent essay, The Cause and Prevention of Crowd Disasters, and the seminal book, Pedestrian Planning and Design, wrote, “Thanks for all your great life-saving work.”

Paul has appeared on 180 TV programs and has been quoted in 650 articles on crowd safety, worldwide. Paul's work has been profiled in scores of media outlets. 

Crowd Management Strategies created numerous firsts in the field of crowd safety training, including the Crowdsafe® Database, Crowdsafe® Skills training, and the Crowdsafe® Series of training publications, such as: You and The Crowd (the most widely circulated and taught spectator crowd safety guidance), You and The Crowd Crush and Mosher-Friendly Guidance.

Through Crowd Management Strategies, Paul pioneered concert crowd safety litigation from the early 1990s through the Millennium, relying upon the vast resources of the Crowdsafe® Database, his facility management work and his extensive knowledge gained by studying crowds from within the crowd. 

Paul served as Asst. Exec. Director/Asst. GM of a major US facility complex; participated in the development of crowd safety laws, standards, and guidance around the world, and as Chief of Staff of Cincinnati's Task Force on Crowd Control and Safety authored the first US event crowd safety guidance, Crowd Management: The Report of the Task Force on Crowd Control and Safety in 1980.

Paul's post-crowd disaster analysis is highly respected. He was first to publicly articulate crowd safety missteps at the 2022 Itaewon Halloween festivities, 2021 Astroworld festival, 2017 Route 91 festival, 2011 Indiana State Fair and Woodstock '99. In 2008 after a major Black Friday tragedy, Paul served as OSHA's crowd safety consultant in the agency's landmark workers' crowd safety standards fight (U.S. Secretary of Labor v Walmart Stores, Inc.). In 2003, invited to address the Rhode Island commission on The Station concert disaster as well as Chicago's panel on the E2 club crowd crush tragedy. In 2000, Paul's Roskilde Festival tragedy insights led to invitations from the Danish government and festival promoter to help make the event safer.

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