Richard is the Chief Executive of the Healthy Brains Global Initiative (HBGI). Set up with the support of the WHO and UNICEF, with funders including the Wellcome Trust, Johnson & Johnson and Otsuka, HBGI aims to increase significantly the understanding of and response to poor mental health.
Between 2000 and 2012, Richard set up and ran high-performing organizations delivering services with outcomes contracts, mainly contracted by the UK government and mostly targeting very long-term unemployment. Over that time his programs assisted around 1 million people. His last contract was worth £750m and was delivered through a network of 75 local subcontractors.
From 2012 to his start at HBGI in 2022, he worked as a Senior Consultant with the World Bank across multiple countries. His biggest projects were shifting basic and essential health services in Afghanistan to new performance-based contracts and an outcomes-focused program in Ethiopia to connect refugees with jobs. He has also been a Senior Advisor for the Global Fund, implementing projects in six countries to demonstrate how contracting (and performance management) can connect grant funding more closely with delivery, increasing performance and reducing waste – in malaria net distribution, TB and malaria testing and treatment, and in adherence to HIV treatment.
Richard has been the Chair of ten Social Impact Bonds in the UK, including homelessness prevention, care for carers, refugee integration and supporting children at risk of failure at school. He is the Chair of a Development Impact Bond for unemployed Palestinian youth, with outcomes funded by the World Bank, and will be chairing a new youth Social Impact Bond in South Africa.
Richard had an early career in international education. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford, and Applied Linguistics at Exeter.