Richard has over 30 years of experience and expertise in fund and business development and is renowned in the financial industry as an expert in the complete process of developing and launching exchanged traded funds. As Chief Operating Officer (COO) for The Terra Fund, he monitors daily trading activities, manages the complete fund pipeline with service providers to ensure efficiency in the financial markets and oversees our annual impact reports for Terra. Furthermore, Richard designs and implements business strategies, establishes guidelines to promote impact and vision with performance and growth, and more importantly, empowers the team at Terra and our partners to serve our purpose of a social impact company for a persistent focus on eliminating poverty and promoting prosperity.

Richard was formerly at Smith Barney (now Morgan Stanley Wealth Management) as a Senior Trader, where he performed value analysis, monitored news stream, macroeconomic fundamentals and formulated trading strategies in determining limitations, investment goals and risk tolerance. His trading experience continued at Ladenburg Thalmann, where he served as Trading Manager and specialized in investment banking and financial products and was further responsible for equity products applying various trading strategies with a focus on fundamental and economic analysis. He was then Managing Director of Capital Markets at NASDAQ, where his duties included compliance of regulations set forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission, overseeing management of the capital markets to ensure quality control within the company’s policies and regulations and performing the direction of due diligence in operational and management decisions.

Additionally, Richard is Co–Founder at the ETF BILD (Business Insights & Leadership Discussion) Project, where the forum provides a platform for business leaders, managers and ETF professionals to have an ongoing and open discussion on how leaders in the field are solving problems, the employment of business and operational strategies, the outlook for the current and future marketplace and the lessons learned throughout the industry. He is also the Founder and Principal of Global ETF Advisors, where he specializes in management consulting in the ETF/ETP industry, including capital allocation, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships, assisting in the evaluation and implementation of new programs to provide access to a global network of senior executives and decision makers throughout the exchange trade products industry.

Richard attended Ithaca College and graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with a Bachelor in Economics. At the University of North Carolina Wilmington Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where he is considered a veteran in the ETF industry, Richard is proud to mentor, advise and support entrepreneurs, students, faculty and alumni in the creation of entrepreneurial ventures through the financial markets, in particular the experience he has with exchange traded funds.