Based in Los Angeles, Lou Adesso is the Director of Control Risks' Critical Event Management practice in the Americas. This practice brings together Control Risks' crisis, security, and risk intelligence expertise with the market-leading response technology offerings of Control Risks' strategic partner, Everbridge. In this role, Lou is responsible for the growth of the partnership as well as developing innovative solutions for managing the entire lifecycle of critical events - from awareness and assessment to response and recovery.

Lou’s recent experience includes:

• COVID-19 response planning for a scientific research institution: Rapidly developed crisis management, pandemic response, and business continuity plans and playbooks to enable the institution to mount an early and organized response to the COVID-19 outbreak. 
• Risk Assessment consulting for a large investment group: Developed a customized risk assessment methodology and utilized that methodology as part of a cross-disciplinary team of experts conducting on-site risk assessments to support a major investment decision. Identified ‘red flag’ risks requiring immediate mitigation and developed suggested controls to ensure acceptable residual risk.
• Business Continuity consulting for global social media company: Facilitated dozens of business impact assessment interviews and business continuity briefings across multiple divisions and levels of management.
• Embedded Business Resiliency consultant for a global financial services firm: Developed, socialized and implemented a multifaceted business resiliency program incorporating incident response, crisis management, and business continuity. Served on incident and crisis response teams for natural disasters and IT outages.
• Crisis Management consulting for a global technology infrastructure organization: Developed a crisis management program for a global organization facing unique technological and reputational risks. Worked with a cross-functional group of senior executives to validate and test the plan through an intensive crisis management workshop and exercise.

Lou has over 15 years of incident response, risk assessment, and crisis management experience. At Control Risks, his focus has been on crisis management and incident response planning, as well as developing and facilitating engaging exercises for audiences ranging from executive crisis management teams to site emergency response teams. Prior to joining Control Risks, Lou managed the Aviation Analysis division of a travel intelligence and security firm.