He co-authored the bestselling, award-winning book, Digital Assassination: Protecting Your Reputation, Brand, or Business Against Online Attacks, published by St. Martin’s Press.

The book coined the phrase ‘Digital Assassination’ and offers a roadmap to what is happening online, why it is happening and what you can do about it.

It reveals how digital attacks can ruin brands, damage reputations and endanger lives. It exposes strategies digital assassins and trolls deploy and defines ways to turn the tables on their deception.

His new leadership and crisis eBook, launch in May 2025, Command the Conversation: Next Level Communications Techniques, offers leading edge ideas on managing reputation and brand tailored for diverse leaders in a rapidly evolving cyber environment.

The book’s forward is by Dick Grasso, longest serving New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chairman and chief executive officer.

Each episode is a bylined article previously featured in Fortune, Corporate Counsel Business Journal (CCBJ), Directors and Boards, and Directorship Magazine, published by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD).

Richard has extensive hands-on experience in the world’s financial markets. Throughout a period of rapidly developing public policy issues, historic levels of market activity, unprecedented change in world affairs and intense media coverage, he planned and directed the NYSE’s global activities and programs.

For nearly a decade, he was a member of the NYSE’s Management (policy) and Executive (operations) Committees. And on the firing line as the Big Board’s chief spokesman, he had a unique vantage on business, industry and media. Richard for several years chaired the NYSE Foundation.

Richard developed strategies to address market challenges including governance and shareholder activism; regulatory, disciplinary actions, algo trading, volatility and liquidity; corporate mergers, acquisitions and IPOs. He counseled chief executives and boards in the U.S, EU, Asia and Latin America, as well as several heads of state.

Richard managed some of the most visible global corporate crises in our lifetime, including: the October 1987 market crash and Federal Reserve’s $4 billion recapitalization of Long-Term Capital Management, financed by a consortium of fourteen global financial institutions.

Following the September 11^th attacks, he provided counsel to leadership at Merrill Lynch, Lloyd’s of London, Nasdaq, American Stock Exchange, National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and Security Traders Association — all significantly affected by the terrorism raids.

As a top corporate officer, Richard made a specialty of identifying emerging issues and managing responses to; fires, bomb threats, protests, kidnappings, terrorism; product tampering, recalls, liability; regional, federal, international or oversight commissions, investigations, rulings, studies and testimony; unanticipated management or board changes and challenges, as well as insider trading and market volatility.

At the request of Ronald Regan, the NYSE taped Richard’s expertise to plan, organize and initiate the historic China-US financial markets symposium in Beijing in November 1986.

This event brought more than 20 of Wall Streets top leaders to China to educate several hundred Chinese officials and business leaders on global financial markets, which further developed the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, marking the beginning of new economic growth and entrepreneurship.

Additionally, Richard was the first American to co-host a media briefing in the Great Hall of the People, for both journalists prior the conference, as well as a separate briefing following a meeting between the delegation and China’s supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping.

He was also the first foreigner presented one share of stock in Chinese business, the “Flying Happiness Acoustics Company.”

Following this historic Bush-Gorbachev Malta Summit (December 1989), George H.W. Bush (POTUS) requested the NYSE create a groundbreaking USSR-US financial markets seminar in Moscow (October 1990). Richard, on the NYSE Management and Executive Committees, was charged with organizing and operating the event. He was also the first American to co-host a media briefing inside the Kremlin alongside Russian counterparts to discuss the summit.

This landmark seminar brought together more than twenty top U.S. financial CEOs and hundreds of Soviet officials, academics and business leaders to discuss global capital markets. The seminar was instrumental for the opening of exchanges in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1991.

Additionally, during this period, Richard was part of a delegation that guided political and business leaders in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland through their transitions to capitalism and establishment of financial markets.

Concurrent with those activities, he coordinated White House activities for the NYSE CEO in his capacity as chair of President Reagan’s Board of Advisors on Private Sector Initiatives.

Richard was director and senior vice president, corporate affairs and a member of the Executive Management Committee for SmithKline Beecham, Plc, London based global healthcare company, which marketed more than three hundred products in 130 countries with revenues of $14 billion. SB merged with Glaxo.

Based in London, he had worldwide responsibility for government affairs and public policy, communications and investor relations, issues, industry relations and philanthropic activities.

Under his leadership, during an intense political climate in healthcare, corporate affairs were

re-energized through management changes, deployment of technology and integration of strategic plans with business lines … all enhanced and strengthened SB’s global policy reach.

He was invested as a Knight of Magistral Grace, Sovereign Order of Malta; Knight Grand Cross, Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem; Knight, Order of Merit, Republic of Italy; Knight Commander Jus Patronato, Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George, and Knight Grand Cross, Royal Order of Francis I, both Royal House of Bourbon; Knight Commander, Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, and Knight Commander, Order of Merit, both Royal House of Savoy.

Richard was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and is recognized by international organizations.  He is the recipient of professional awards, including two Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvils.

He has been active in the Scouting all his life and received several awards including Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and is an avid outdoorsman and sailor.

Richard serves on the board of the New York State Trooper Foundation. He was a member of the Private Sector Advisory Committee, United States Information Agency, State Department, Washington, DC. And for more than 25 years a member of the National Press Club.

He received a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences from the New York Institute of Technology and for more than twenty years served on the university’s board of trustees and its executive committee.

He holds NYIT’s two honors: president’s medal for outstanding service to the community and an honorary Doctor of Letters. He completed the executive program at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, CA.

He is a sought-after expert and leading commentator on brands, crisis, media, reputation and financial market volatility…and leads with authority across AI, cyber and digital attacks.

His talks and writings direct leaders to conquer competition in this era of intense government and public scrutiny, media proliferation and hype.

He combines experience — managing some of the most visible global corporate crises in our lifetime, from market crashes, cyberattacks, product recalls to terrorism — with exclusive behind-the-scenes insights of current events and history.

With business under attack — as media magnifies customer, employee, investor and regulator perceptions — he describes actions and leadership necessary to master escalating digital dangers, risks and threats.

To engage him as a conference speaker, please contact: droche@torrenzano.com