About

Astris Integrity is the consulting practice of Rick Schumacher, an investigations leader with more than thirty years of experience conducting, managing, and overseeing high-risk internal investigations across government, corporate, and global environments. His career has carried him from sensitive operations work in the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, through more than a decade adjudicating regulatory and fraud investigations at the Texas Workforce Commission, into senior global investigations roles in the private sector.

Across those settings, he has been the person organizations turned to when matters were sensitive, when senior personnel were involved, when cross-border considerations complicated the work, or when the cost of getting an investigation wrong was high. The pattern across three decades is that the same disciplines apply regardless of sector. Investigations are defensible when they are planned, when evidence is preserved with rigor, when interviews are conducted methodically rather than instinctively, and when the work product would withstand the scrutiny of a court, even when no court is involved. Astris exists to bring those disciplines to organizations that are building their investigation functions from the ground up or strengthening functions that have plateaued.

Rick is a Certified Fraud Examiner, a Certified PEACE Investigative Interviewer, and a member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Advisory Board. He serves on the Advisory Board for ISO/TS 37008:2023, the international guidance standard for internal investigations of organizations. He is a Tillman Scholar and a recipient of the Pat Tillman Foundation's Make Your Mark Award. He is the author of The Agile Investigator: Workplace Investigations and The Weight of Small Things: How Power Hides in the Smallest Artifacts.