Richard is a Wealth Advisor in the firm’s Tucson, Arizona, office. He joined Ashton Thomas in 2022 after serving as an advisor for a Tucson-based registered investment adviser firm.

As a lifetime aviator and aircraft owner, Richard understands the unique needs of pilots and aircraft owners, as well as their family’s financial needs. Richard holds a commercial multi-engine instrument rating with high-performance and complex aircraft endorsements. As a high-performance Mooney aircraft owner, Richard has flown for the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and is currently a member of Angel Flight West, which provides charitable flights to children and families with urgent and serious medical needs. He obtained his private pilot certificate in 1983.

“I became a financial advisor because I found myself in an international business career which was very impersonal,” says Richard. “The personal, one-on-one nature of the advisory business was very appealing to me since discussion about money is one of the most personal and private things an individual can do. It demands a high degree of mutual trust to learn, know, teach, and lead people to act properly with good investments and a good plan. It is the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Now, I am in a firm where I can combine this unique trust with my passion for aviation to help aviation enthusiasts navigate their financials in the world of aviation and aircraft ownership”

Prior to his advisory career, Richard was a global director in the weather measurement industry, with the global weather measurement company, Vaisala and its predecessors. Richard completed his tenure with the company in 2015 as Global Director of Renewable Energy, a role in which he was responsible for the company’s renewable energy sector worldwide including mergers and acquisitions projects.

Richard is a graduate of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and was an integral part of the engineering team that developed the National Lightning Detection Network. While there he co-founded a UNIX information systems company in New York.

He hails from the Philadelphia area, but Richard grew up mostly in the Hudson River Valley of New York state. His father was involved in research and development for IBM and through this exposure to technology in his formative years, Richard developed a passion for information systems, mathematics, and related engineering processes which carried through the better part of his career. This passion still influences how he approaches problem-solving today as a financial planner.

Throughout his professional career, Richard has traveled the world a good deal. He has lived in New York, Boulder, Colorado and currently resides in Tucson, Arizona, and also maintains a residence in El Paso, Texas with his wife, Monica.