Richard Stafford is an alumnus of HARRT and has served on the executive committee since 2007. He served as a Senior Vice President for Montgomery Watson, Inc., a global environmental engineering and construction firm with offices in some 30 countries. In this capacity, he served as a member of the firm's Global Operations Committee and was responsible for leading the company's worldwide Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Information Technology functions. Prior to joining Montgomery Watson, he served as a senior HR Manager for Hughes Aircraft Company.

After retiring from Montgomery Watson, Stafford founded Human Capital Management LLC (HCM), a firm dedicated to helping organizations develop and implement the human capital strategy, infrastructure and leading-edge human resource practices necessary to support business growth and profitability. He has some 25-plus years of leadership experience in the private and public sectors, including international experience in Europe, Asia, Middle East, India and Latin America.

His international experience includes leading organizational development projects in some 30 countries worldwide, including:

• Human resources strategy development and implementation;
  
• Knowledge management systems;
  
• Operational reviews;
  
• Due diligence and integration planning/implementation;
  
• Performance management systems;
  
• Reward systems;
  
• Executive and management development;
  
• Succession planning;
  
• Organizational change and development.

He is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management; UCLA's Human Resources Roundtable; Loyola Marymount University's (LMU) Executive MBA Advisory Board. He chairs the Human Resources Management Advisory Board for the College of Business Administration at California State University, Long Beach as well as serving on the Dean's Advisory Board there. In 2001, he was named "Executive in Residence" at LMU, where he teaches in the university's MBA and Executive Development Programs.

He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University, where he received his doctorate.