About Me

A seasoned C-suite executive with over 30 years of experience, Richard provides a unique perspective bridging technology, marketing, and policy into cohesive business solutions. Passionate about building ecosystems, connecting needs to resources, identifying and addressing root causes of complex problems, and impacting culture changes, Dr. Hartman uses his 360-degree Approach integrating data analytics, digital communication technologies, and interdisciplinary collaboration to enhance the client/consumer/stakeholder experience.

With a variety of experiences in the public, private and academic sectors he provides an extensive depth and breadth of knowledge in research, field, and corporate levels and understands how to mold and shape complex and innovative programs and campaigns into successful operations. His global experience spans from Azerbaijan to Singapore and has provided distinctive opportunities to work on global issues at the highest diplomatic levels during challenging times under difficult situations with success.

As a career member of the federal senior executive service (SES), he recently served as the Executive Director, Office of Transition and Economic Development (OTED), as the primary consultant and advisor to VA senior leadership regarding highly visible, complex, and enduring issues concerning the delivery and application of Veterans benefits and services. He oversaw transition assisting program services to over 250,000 transitioning Service members annually improving access to a variety of VA benefits and services for over 18 million veterans and their beneficiaries. Recognizing the broad spectrum of programs to meet Veteran needs he also increased the budget from $81M-$118M and increased staffing from 39-204 positions to meet current/emerging Veteran needs.

Earlier as an SES at the VA he was responsible for all policy development and program evaluation for legislatively mandated health care delivery programs within the VA and directly oversaw a $320M budget and influenced over $80B. Of note, he lead the efforts to create an Office of Rural Health. He identified startup requirements, defended, obtained, and obligated funds to staff and development initiatives to include telemental health expansion, the creation of research ‘Regional Resource Centers’, clinical trials, and promotion of education/training. His success resulted in a $250M congressional appropriation in new funding for Rural Health initiatives where he obligated all funds within eight months creating 74 new programs, many of which were either national in scope or affected multiple states with an emphasis on the latest technologies, training/recruitment and collaborations with non-VA health community partners.

As an entrepreneur, he co-founded a BIGDATA analytics tech company from a conceptual start-up to a successful acquisition so public and private organizations make more informed decisions by monitoring the dialog on the Web with an emphasis on defense, healthcare, education, environment, and energy.

As an executive at the Department of Defense, he lead the medical and environmental assessment group in the first US site assessment in Libya in over 20 years supporting the United States Chemical Weapons Destruction Assistance Assessment Team (DoD and Department of State) which was key to restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya.

Preceding his federal service, Richard was an active-duty officer in the United States Air Force where he most notably devised and orchestrated the development of the Battlefield Medical Information System (BMIST) which was selected as DoD-wide information technology care standard and was named one of the Army’s greatest inventions by the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command in 2004. Renamed Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care, or MC4, there are over 24,000 devices in Iraq and 13 other countries, which allows all medical personnel to quickly input medical information for all service members in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other combat deployment.

Richard has authored or co-authored several technical publications and is regularly invited to keynote and speak at national/international conferences about the convergence of health, policy and information technology. A recipient of 5 National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants his current research and business interests are in policy, communication, and branding. He holds both a Ph.D. and MS in policy and management and has held adjunct faculty positions as an Associate Professor with George Washington University and Assistant Professor at Georgetown University and a board member on various public and private sector boards and well as Advisory board member to both start-ups and established companies.