Richard Richards

Richard Richards has traveled wide and far in a number of leadership and training roles in both corporate and non-profit arenas. Originally from the UK, he has lived and worked in the USA, Germany, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. While leading teams in Australia, Korea, Israel, China, Mariana Islands, Germany, Chile, Argentina and Mexico, he has acquired a deep appreciation for the world and many of its peoples. In addition, he has owned two businesses: a fine art gallery specializing in Latin American art and a training consulting practice.
Richard has a BSc (Hons) from the University of Surrey in the UK and an MA in Applied Learning, from the School for New Learning at DePaul University in Chicago, focusing on “The Use of the Arts (Performance and Visual) in Community Building and Social Change.”
As a professional actor, Richard has studied improvisation at Second City in Chicago and has worked on stage, in voice-over and in film.
Until a few years ago The Ariel Group’s Vice President of Learning Design, he has reconfigured his relationship with the Ariel Group (and his life in general) to learn how to work with leaders at the “bottom of the economic pyramid” (primarily youth, women and indigenous people).
He currently lives in Ocotal, Nicaragua, volunteering for El Instituto de Liderazgo de Las Segovias, a small leadership institute on the border of Honduras that develops the citizenship and leadership skills of individual and collective protagonists as a way to address the local issues of poverty. He pays for this experience by teaching leadership presence and storytelling skills to people at the top of the pyramid.
More info: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/richard-richards/11/147/48b