ABOUT US
Sheepdog Advisory Group offers custom-tailored physical risk management and risk mitigation solutions that provide concentric rings of security for education and private sector businesses. We integrate advanced best of breed strategic solutions that incorporates surveillance, analytics, AI, and personnel for security and intelligence operations into a coherent posture to meet our clients’ needs.
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Sustained through real-time updates between intelligence analytics and security personnel, our unique approach to security, is seamless and capable of immediately addressing any emergent threat or event that could disrupt business operations. Sheepdog offers a unique blend experience, technology, and planning for world-class execution of security programs to effectively respond to every security challenge.
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Our Founder
Michael DeHaven is a combat-experienced Marine veteran and antiterrorism advisor who has dedicated his life to protecting people, places, and missions in the world’s most complex and high-risk environments. For more than twenty years, he served across military, government, and private-sector operations, deploying over 35 times to regions facing active threats and instability.
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Throughout his career, Michael was entrusted with safeguarding personnel, critical facilities, and highly sensitive information in war zones and other high-threat settings. His leadership and service have been recognized with multiple combat and leadership awards, including the Intelligence Medal for Valor for operations in support of the Global War on Terror.
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Beyond the field, Michael is known as a steady, strategic leader who believes security is ultimately about people. He has built and led high-performing teams, designed security programs from the ground up, and introduced new technologies and processes that strengthen preparedness while reducing risk. His work spans threat assessment, crisis management, and incident response, always with a focus on clarity, coordination, and accountability.
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Today, Michael brings this experience home—advising organizations, institutions, and communities on how to anticipate risk, respond decisively, and create environments where people can live, work, and learn safely. He partners closely with local, state, federal, and international stakeholders to deliver practical, mission-driven security solutions grounded in real-world experience and principled leadership.
Founder Stewardship Letter
On Responsibility, Cost, and Restraint
The Sheepdog Framework™ was forged in environments where failure was not theoretical and consequences were not abstract. It was shaped in moments where decisions carried permanent weight—where hesitation, misjudgment, or unchecked force could irreversibly alter lives.
Over the course of my military and operational career, I was entrusted with responsibilities that demanded judgment under extreme pressure and accountability far beyond the moment itself. That service was recognized through honors including the Medal of Valor, the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star (with V device), and additional meritorious awards. These distinctions are not markers of achievement in the way people often imagine them. They are acknowledgments of burden—of circumstances where responsibility could not be deferred and restraint mattered as much as action.
Those experiences left no room for illusion.
They taught me that protection fails most often not because people lack courage, but because systems are poorly designed, authority is unclear, and power is applied without sufficient discipline. They taught me that overreaction can be as dangerous as inaction—and that the absence of governance under pressure is itself a form of failure.
They also taught me something rarely stated plainly:
the best protection is almost never seen.
Success looks like disruption avoided.
It looks like calm where panic could have taken hold.
It looks like ordinary life continuing uninterrupted because the right decisions were made early, quietly, and with restraint.
That is the standard this framework exists to uphold.
Stewardship of the Sheepdog Framework™ is personal because the lessons behind it were earned at real cost. They were shaped by responsibility to others, not by recognition or outcome alone. Those lessons demand that protection—especially in civilian environments—be governed by proportionality, ethical clarity, and respect for trust that cannot easily be restored once broken.
This framework is stewarded deliberately and licensed selectively because experience has shown that capability without restraint eventually causes harm. Growth without governance erodes legitimacy. And protection divorced from accountability becomes something else entirely.
Protection is not defined by what is possible.
It is defined by what is justified.
The Sheepdog Framework™ exists to reduce harm, preserve trust, and protect the continuity of life for people who never asked to be placed in the path of danger.