Our Chairman, Richard Knowlton, founded our company in 2014 after many years’ experience of working at senior levels in the public and private sectors. He has an unparalleled range of contacts with a deep experience of security risk management in governments, in multinational organisations such as the EU, and in international business.  These provide the impressive associate network which underpins the work of Richard Knowlton Associates.

Apart from his role as our chairman, Richard holds a number of Board and advisory positions,   He is a Strategic Adviser to Axelos RESILIA, an Associate Director of Strategia Worldwide and a member of the Digital Resilience Advisory Board of the Digital Leaders’ Forum. He is also a member of the Future Vision Committee of the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRI) and an honorary Life Member of the International Security Management Association (ISMA).

Richard was Group Corporate Security Director of Vodafone between 2009-2015, having previously worked in Milan as Head of Security (Global Operations) for the Italian UniCredit Group, the largest bank in Central and Eastern Europe.

Between 2014-2017, Richard was Executive Director (Europe) of the non-profit Internet Security Alliance (ISA), a multi-sector trade association based in Washington DC. He had earlier been a Board member of the Commonwealth Cyber Crime Consortium and of the UK Government’s Overseas Security Information for Business (OSIB).

Richard has spoken on digital security risk management on BBC Radio 4 (“The Bottom Line”) and regularly presents on corporate security issues at major international conferences. Recent highlights include presentations on Internet of Things Security as an industry expert at the Mobile World Congresses in 2017 and 2018 in Barcelona and on maritime cyber-security at NAV18 in Trieste, Italy. For three years (2016-2018) Richard has chaired the major international “Security of Things World” conferences in Berlin, a series that focuses on the security implications of Internet of Things and Industrial Control Systems technology.

Richard has also presented at Chatham House, the US National Association of Corporate Directors in Washington DC, CeBIT in Germany, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) “In Person” series,  the Financial Times Cyber Security Summit and Wall Street Journal cyber security events. Richard has also taken part in the digital security webinars run by the European Confederation of Directors’ Associations (ecoDa) in Brussels, Belgium.

A graduate of Cambridge University, Richard spent over 30 years in the UK Foreign Service, with tours in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas.

Our Managing Director and Company Secretary is Evelina Ravarino Knowlton. After several years running a company in Turin, Italy, Evelina qualified in marketing and spent many years in sales and marketing for international companies in Milan and Dubai. These companies specialized in bringing together top managers from a variety of industrial sectors to discuss current strategic issues.