​Richard earned a BS in mathematics in 2006, graduating magna cum laude from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He was a high school math teacher for two years before starting a career in curriculum development and educational products. Key roles include instructional designer at Scholastic (2011–2015), senior learning architect at HMH (2015–2018), product manager at Curriculum Associates (2018–2019), and marketing director at HMH (2019–current).
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Throughout his education and career, Richard has dived deeply into many disciplines, including mathematics, data analysis, programming, game development, math and literacy education, assessment writing, and copywriting. Key projects for which Richard was part of the development team include Math 180 (2011–2015), Math Inventory (2015), Read 180 (2015–2016), Math Expressions (2016–2017), HMH Into Math (2017–2018), i-Ready Classroom Mathematics (2018–2019), the Math at Work video series (2013–2020), and HMH’s blog (2019–current).
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Apart from his career in education, Richard has a quenchless creative spirit and is always busy with something new. Accomplishments include music directing and playing piano for dozens of theatrical productions, creating art including one gallery showing, co-creating a tabletop game, and spending a few too many hours memorizing word lists for Scrabble.​
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Richard lives with his husband and cat in Brooklyn, New York and writes the Blankman List, a monthly list of events and things to do in New York City.