Richard received his Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from Penn State University in 1973, and Masters degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1978. He had a career of 36 years with the National Weather Service, with the last 10 or more years leading a software branch. In 2011 he retired from the weather service to pursue his personal passions, software development and genealogy. Early on, he crossed paths with Joe Bissett who had just acquired a program called Clooz developed by Elizabeth Kelly Kerstens. They both were users of the software, and were attracted by its document orientation. In 2012, they formed Ancestral Systems, LLC, and issued a much needed update to the Clooz software. Richard is the Chief Operations Officer for Ancestral Systems, and is the lead software developer.
