David Richmond draws on 30 years’ experience as a diplomat. During this time he saw enormous changes internationally, including, in his own words, “two seismic shifts – the end of the cold war and the 9/11 attacks – both in their different ways reminders of the limitations of conventional wisdom and the dangers of relying upon the status quo.”
Born in London and educated there and at Cambridge University, he joined the Foreign Office in 1976 and was posted to Beirut to learn Arabic and subsequently to Baghdad shortly before the start of the Iran/Iraq war. He has been involved with the Middle East ever since but has dealt with a wide range of international political, economic and security issues in a career which included postings to Brussels and to New York, where he worked on the UN Security Council.
In 2000 he became the UK Representative to the European Union’s new Political and Security Committee where he was one of the architects of European Security and Defence Policy. “From one page blueprint to the deployment of the first EU operational peace-keeping missions in Macedonia, Bosnia and the DRC in just three years was, by EU standards, fast work. There is nothing more satisfying than starting with an idea, steering it through all the traps and obstacles and turning it into a political reality.”
He returned to Baghdad in 2003 after the removal of Saddam Hussein just as the insurgency was beginning to gather strength and spent a year grappling with the consequences for Iraq’s political future. In 2004 he became the UK’s Special Representative for Iraq.
His last diplomatic posting was back in London as Director-General for Defence and Intelligence where he led the Foreign Office’s work on counter-terrorism, sat on the Joint Intelligence Committee and was a member of the Foreign Office Board. This was a job which required strong strategic thinking and highly sensitive political antennae and gave him first hand knowledge of top level policy and decision making.
As part of the Bell Pottinger Sans Frontieres team, he uses his expertise and experience to help devise and implement strategies which can deliver results in a complex and sometimes volatile international environment.
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