John Richardson is the executive director of the Blackstone Ranch Institute in Taos, New Mexico (established in early 2006), whose mission is to support cross-sector strategic dialogues on a variety of environmental fronts that lead to important social innovation. For many years John was a troubleshooter for the United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF), focusing on conflict countries around the world. He has also been a professor of international politics at the University of New Mexico, written about travel and politics for a variety of national publications, and was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in central Africa in the late 1970s.