Richard Royse

Richard Royse spent the last half of his professional working career in investment banking and brokerage, first at Kidder Peabody and then at Smith Barney in Portland, Oregon. Richard worked at Smith Barney for 17 years, a period of enormous growth in the financial services industry. Smith Barney became a wholly owned subsidiary of Citigroup and Mr. Royse served as general manager through multiple acquisitions.

Since retiring from the investment business, Richard’s principal interests have included the cultural arts, homelessness, donor development, and health care.

Mr. Royse holds AB and MS degrees from the University of Southern California, an MBA from the University of Chicago and, most recently, a Master of Liberal Arts degree (2014) from Stanford University where his thesis explored the early beginnings of the US public health service.

While at Cambridge, Richard is looking to improve his skills as an effective advocate for change in addressing homelessness in the United States.

In 2024, as a member of the inaugural cohort of the Oxford Next Horizons Program, Richard produced a case study of homelessness using Portland, Oregon and Sheffield, England as templates to better understand the homeless population in the UK and United States. Using both OECD data and visits to Sheffield, Richard compared the differences and similarities of homelessness in the two countries. Broadly speaking, he concluded that his next research would investigate the underlying economics of homelessness.