CMG OBE
Richard is Director of The Global Strategy Network, a group of policy makers and practitioners working to increase social cohesion and community resilience against violent extremism. Its members currently run programmes in Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria.
From 2004 to 2012, Richard worked at the United Nations in New York as Coordinator of the Al-Qaida and Taliban Monitoring Team, appointed by the UN Secretary-General. In 2005 he helped establish the UN Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force, now the Office of Counter Terrorism, where he led on radicalisation, terrorist use of the Internet, and terrorist financing.
Richard is a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and an Adjunct Professor of Law and Financial Integrity at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. He is on the board of several organisations that look at issues to do with violent extremism, including the International Centre for Counter Terrorism – The Hague; the Global Center on Cooperative Security in Washington, the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London. He is a member of the Independent Review Panel of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), and of the International Advisory Board of Hedayah.
Before joining the United Nations, Richard worked for the British Government both at home and overseas.
His most recent published work is Beyond the Caliphate: Foreign Fighters and the Threat of Returnees.