The new look of the gun violence prevention movement
Open to Everyone
In the face of cuts across the federal government gun violence prevention funding, groups and researchers are relying more and more on private funders and philanthropies to help fill the gaps. Rob Wilcox, the former co-deputy director of the now-defunct White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, now leads one of the biggest groups that are trying to provide that backstop, the Fund for a Safer Future, a donor collaborative that pools resources from more than 35 foundations and steers them toward gun violence prevention, research, and policy work.
He will discuss his work and the state of the gun violence prevention movement with Ford School students and Dr. Patrick Carter, co-director of the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention.
Speaker bios:
Rob Wilcox is President & Chief Executive Officer of the Fund for a Safer Future, which he joined in 2026 as its first President & CEO. He previously served as co-deputy director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in the Biden-Harris Administration, where he built a track record of turning evidence-informed strategies into real-world results. In that role, he led the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant federal gun safety legislation enacted in 30 years.
Prior to his White House service, Wilcox served in senior policy roles at Everytown for Gun Safety, where he worked on state and federal legislative efforts, and as a Staff Attorney at Brady United. His personal connection to the issue—his cousin Laura was killed in a workplace shooting in 2001—has driven his commitment to evidence-informed solutions for more than two decades.
He holds a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a JD from Northwestern School of Law.
Dr. Patrick Carter is a Professor of Emergency Medicine (School of Medicine) and Health Behavior & Health Equity (School of Public Health) at the University of Michigan. He is the Co-Director of the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention and the Co-Director of the CDC-funded University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center. Dr. Carter’s research is within the field of firearm injury prevention, specifically the development, testing, and implementation of emergency department (ED)‐based interventions to decrease firearm violence, youth violence, and associated risk behaviors such as substance use among high‐risk urban youth populations. He also has a line of research focused on using intensive longitudinal data, collected via innovative m-health applications, to characterize epidemiological and contextual factors underlying adolescent risky firearm behaviors.
He is the Past-Chair of the ACEP Trauma and Injury Prevention Section, serves as an Assistant Editor for the Annals of Emergency Medicine, and has served as a member of the Technical Advisory Group focused on developing a firearm research agenda for the American College of Emergency Physicians. Dr. Carter has research funding as a PI or Co-I on grants from NIDA, NIAAA, CDCP, and NICHD, all focused within the field of violence and injury prevention.