Richard Blundell
Sustainability Leader | Entrepreneur/CEO | Board Member | Mentor
Richard has more than 40 years of senior executive management and consulting experience in the global sustainability/ESG and technology sectors.
His experience includes operations management, corporate and market development, mergers and acquisitions, new business initiation, and consulting. Richard’s international experience includes running businesses in East and West Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia (12 countries from India to China). He has significant experience in new business creation and in the management of growth-stage businesses in global markets. He has completed more than $500 million in combined corporate M&A transactions and private equity funding for early-stage companies.
Richard is an Advisoran Educatora Speaker
Richard is an Advisoran Educatora Speaker
From 1989-2004, Richard held senior leadership positions with Laidlaw Inc., Canada’s largest waste management company, as Director of European Business Development; SGS SA, a global company in inspection, testing, and certification services as SVP of the Global Environmental Services Division; Hagemeyer Cosa Liebermann, a technology marketing company in Asia Pacific as EVP of the Technology Division; and The Global Business Sustainability Network, an exclusive, for-profit sustainability and innovation network for global category leaders (Network members included: Apple, Duke Energy, Oracle, AT&T, Tetra Pak, Maersk, Stora Enso, Shell, Canadian Tire Corp, FrieslandCampina, DSM and Logitech), as Co-Founder.
During this period and since 2004, Richard has held founder and/or executive management positions in more than 10 early-stage, largely cleantech companies in Europe, Asia and North America, including a number of Board of Directors appointments.
His startup domain experience includes: smart cities, bio-pesticide, e-waste recycling, water and wastewater treatment, electric vehicle, public transportation, indoor air treatment, environmental services, ESG expert networks, regenerative agriculture and life sciences.
Richard joined the MaRS Discovery District in 2018 to lead the development of applied innovation networks for global, corporate partners.
In 2019, he was appointed Managing Director of the Cleantech Venture Services group, where he led a team that delivered talent, capital and market services to a network of more than 250 cleantech startups from early-stage revenue to high growth ventures. He continues to be an advisor to cleantech ventures and venture capital firms, including family offices, which are investing in the cleantech space (direct and fund of funds). He provides senior leadership and board of director support to cleantech ventures focused on ESG/sustainability and go-to-market strategy, business development, international expansion, business model construction and early-stage fundraising. He is currently advising tech companies that deliver smart lighting, nature-based solutions, biodiversity MRV, sustainable drinking water and an AI expert-driven cleantech solutions marketplace.
Richard is an Executive-in-Residence and Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He joined the Rotman faculty in 2014, where he teaches MBA, Executive MBA and Global Executive MBA courses in sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship. He is also an advisor to the Prince of Wales Accounting for Sustainability charity and The Danish Government’s GreenEdTech initiative, which delivers sustainability content in the national high school curriculum to prepare students for the jobs of the future. He is an ESG/sustainability advisor to Geneva/London-based, fund of funds, Reference Capital.
He is a frequent speaker on Sustainability/ESG, innovation and entrepreneurship at global companies, conferences and universities including the University of Toronto, McMaster University (Hamilton), Stanford University (Palo Alto), Fudan University (Shanghai), Henley Business School (Johannesburg), ICFAI Business School (Mumbai) and Fundação Dom Cabral (Sao Paulo).