Richard started as Director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 2012 following 20 years at the BBC.
At the BBC he spent a decade in BBC News and ran the BBC News websites before revamping the BBC’s children’s channels with a mission to raise the quality and impact of programming. He then helped to launch BBC North at Salford Quays.
Since joining Kew, he has refocussed Kew’s strategy towards developing and delivering solutions to the biodiversity and climate crises. This has led to significant growth of Kew Science, the digitisation in full of Kew’s collections, expansion of post-graduate education and more prominent science and conservation narratives to visitors.
He is a passionate advocate for the power of plants and fungi to help solve the critical challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century. He is an official Champion for Food Forever, a global initiative that aims to secure biodiversity for the benefit of food security around the world.
He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and is married with 3 children
