Five weeks into his role as Vice President of Human Resources, Todd Richardson is still in the learning phase of his job.
“While I am new to higher ed and I am learning very quickly the nuances that are associated with the higher ed industry, the hiring, the retaining, the engaging skills and the pieces associated with those remain constant,” Richardson said.
A graduate of IU Bloomington with a law degree from IUPUI, Richardson oversees relations between the administration and IU staff.
He praised the trustees’ decision to hire President Pam Whitten in a 2021 interview with the Indiana Business Journal. He told WFIU that Whitten’s presidency was a factor in his decision to assume the position at IU.
“I had never really looked at higher education as where I saw my path going, but I was watching from the sidelines what President Whitten was doing and was looking to do, and it inspired me to get in the game,” Richardson said.
Richardson is among several high-level IU administrators hired in the past year, including vice presidents Julie Payne-Kirchmeier, Pamela Braboy Jackson, Susan Sciame-Giesecke, Dwayne Pinkney and Tony Prather, as well as IU Bloomington Provost Rahul Shrivastav.
Read more: Whitten selects Rahul Shrivastav for new IU Bloomington provost
A former labor and employment attorney, Richardson previously served as an Executive Vice President of Salesforce, CEO of Edge Mentoring and adjunct professor at Butler University. He was tapped in 2009 by then Indiana governor Mitch Daniels to serve on the Board of Directors for INvestEd, a public benefit corporation that provides loans and financial aid literacy to Indiana college students.
