Prior to his assignment as the USAID/Uganda Mission Director, Mr. Nelson served as the Deputy Coordinator for Power Africa.  This Pretoria-based assignment involved responsibility for all field level coordination and oversight for Power Africa, including working with senior U.S. Government Mission leadership in more than 20 countries to achieve Power Africa's goal of doubling access to power in sub-Saharan Africa.  It also included almost daily engagement with interagency partners, development partners, and private-sector companies from the U.S. and around the world working in the power sector in Africa. Previously Richard served as the Resident Legal Officer at USAID offices in Pretoria, Bangkok, Baghdad, and Washington, providing support over that period on the full suite of legal issues to numerous USAID Missions. 
  
Before USAID, Richard worked for Dell Inc. as an Emerging Markets Strategist working closely with foreign governments in negotiating investment incentive agreements, advocating corporate interests, and analyzing economic development trends.  He also helped manage Dell's corporate social responsibility efforts in India relating to education sponsorship.

Prior to joining Dell, Richard was a Vice President at Wachovia Securities working on syndicated capital markets debt transactions primarily in the aerospace, defense and healthcare sectors.  Prior to that he was an associate at the law firm of McGuire Woods, where he worked on large credit deals primarily for Bank of America, including the bank's first Sharia law-compliant credit facility.  Richard also spent a year as an English professor at Qingdao University in China. 

Richard is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D.) and Brigham Young University (B.A. English, minor in Russian) and is a member of the North Carolina and Washington, D.C. Bars.