[4] Barton graduated from Arlington Catholic High School in Massachusetts in 1974 and received his AB in Speech and Communications from Boston College in 1978.

[5] Barton continued teaching at the Boston College till 1986 and joined the Harvard Business School as lecturer in Management Communication in 1987.

[6] While he was teaching at Harvard Business School, he noticed that during the market's crash, many of his students who were Wall Street executives remained stoic.

He became a frequent, highly ranked guest speaker in workplace violence prevention and crisis leadership at The FBI Academy starting in 2007 and at The US Marshals Service in 2013.

As a consultant he was worked with numerous companies, non-profit institutions and law enforcement agencies on issues involving threats by employees and other stakeholders of the organization.

[14] In January, 2017, Barton was named Distinguished Professor of Crisis Management and Public Safety at the University of Central Florida (UCF) where he leads academic and public/private partnerships on issues of concerns to corporations, law enforcement agencies and non-profit institutions.

[16] Alan Friedman of Northwestern University Medical School wrote that "Barton's book is rare, adopted by leading colleges for classroom use, and by American Express, Nabisco, and others in training programs.

The book reveals seven characteristics Barton found in studying more than 3200 cases of physical assault, stalking, suicide, intimate partner violence and murders in workplaces globally.

Barton was the subject advisor for Crisis Management: The Essentials from Harvard Business School Books, and Risk Communications and Public Health from Oxford University Press.