Thomas N. Kasza
Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Strategic Relationships
When you first meet Thomas Kasza you trust him. And, in some hard-to-measure way – even before learning about who he is and what he has accomplished – you have confidence in him. Maybe it's because he listens well. Maybe it's because he puts himself "in your shoes" – and naturally and instinctively examines your challenges and issues from your vision, or mission, or priorities rather than his own.
That's why Kasza is Hillard Heintze's chief client ambassador. It's why Kasza focuses nearly all of his time on the firm's strategic relationships – on collaborating with our clients, as individual decision-makers, or as multi-expert solution teams – and then working with the rest of us at the firm to align the full spectrum of our experience and knowledge behind what our clients are trying to achieve.
For more than two decades, Kasza served in the United States Secret Service. Following his appointment to the Senior Executive Service, he was the Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago District from 2003 to 2005, responsible for all criminal investigation, protective and intelligence activity of U.S. Secret Service personnel in one of the agency’s five largest offices. During this tenure, Kasza oversaw extensive investigations into areas such as financial institution fraud, cyber crime, infrastructure protection, and threats made on the U.S. President by groups and individuals.
Kasza’s Secret Service assignments included the protection of four U.S. Presidents. While on the Presidential Protective Division, Kasza provided daily close-proximity protection for Presidents G.H. Bush and Clinton. Kasza planned and coordinated protection and supervised domestic and worldwide security advance teams ensuring a secure travel environment.
Additional assignments included managing large-scale security operations during events of national significance; ensuring the security of Pope John Paul’s Mass in New York City’s Central Park in 1995; implementing the security for two Olympics; providing protection for candidate nominees during six U.S. presidential campaigns including supervising the 2000 George W. Bush detail; and conducting and supervising investigations involving crimes against our nation’s financial infrastructure.
Kasza has led security advance teams and completed assignments in all 50 U.S. states and more than 75 countries. Over the years, Thomas has received numerous superior performance awards for his duties including his work on a terrorist task force in 1987 and for the security provided during the visit of 160 foreign heads-of-state to New York City in 1995.
Following his retirement from the Service in 2005, Kasza accepted an invitation to serve as Chief of Staff to the CEO and Chief Security Officer for a financial services company with $15 billion in assets under management. In addition to serving on the company’s risk management committee as well as supporting its compliance, IT and corporate audit functions, he designed and implemented a comprehensive, best practice-based corporate security program. In 2008, Kasza led a security and cyber intelligence business and served on the board of directors for a company specializing in providing risk management solutions for events, businesses and family offices.
