Richard C Powell

Richard Powell is the President of Teneo Strategy and the Chair of the Americas Executive Committee. Mr. Powell’s career has included senior management roles in communications, public affairs, government relations and venture capital firms. He has spent considerable time orchestrating global projects for multinational corporations, as well as providing political and communications advice to CEOs and world leaders, including the Prime Minister of Italy and the President of the Ukraine. Prior to joining Teneo, Mr. Powell was Bloomberg L.P.’s Chief Communications Officer, where he built Bloomberg’s global communications strategy and infrastructure to support the company’s core financial products business, as well as its growth in new products and emerging markets. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Mr. Powell was Chief Operating Officer Worldwide of the global public relations and communications firm, Burson-Marsteller. He also served as the Global Chair of Burson-Marsteller’s Corporate Practice and counseled many clients, including Coca-Cola, HP and Accenture. Before his 2007 return to Burson-Marsteller (where he started his career), Mr. Powell served as Managing Director of Quinn Gillespie & Associates (QGA), one of Washington, D.C.’s leading public affairs and lobbying firms. At QGA, he managed the financial and operational functions of the firm and provided public affairs and corporate communications counsel to a variety of QGA clients, including: Bank of America, HP, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Dell. He also managed QGA’s International Practice and led projects in China, Brussels, Italy, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia and the Ivory Coast. Additionally, Mr. Powell helped guide the acquisition of QGA by WPP in 2004. Mr. Powell previously worked in venture capital management, first as co-founder and Managing Director of Washington, D.C.-based technology incubator, VenCatalyst, and then as Managing Director of the New York office of Idealab after its acquisition of VenCatalyst. He is a native of Tennessee and graduated with a B.B.A in Business and a B.A. in Political Science from Southern Methodist University.