Walter Katz is Vice President of Criminal Justice at Arnold Ventures. After beginning his career as a public defender in Southern California, Walter Katz spent the next three decades in public service, serving as an independent police auditor in San Jose, California, and as deputy inspector general for the County of Los Angeles Office of Inspector General (OIG) before returning to his hometown of Chicago in 2017 to serve as deputy chief of staff for public safety in the administration of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. In that role, Katz oversaw one of the most complex police reform efforts in the United States and served as a co-negotiator of a consent decree enacted in 2019 that resulted in the design and development of the city’s Office of Violence Prevention.