Richard Paton had a unique career as a senior executive in the federal government and as President of a nonprofit business association for 19 years. Throughout his career he has applied his forty years of management experience in two sectors to research and learning about management and leadership.
Based on this experience and learning, he developed two of practical management courses and textbooks that help to develop public sector and non-profit/association leaders to assess difficult management situations and develop effective strategies for success.
Richard has a MA in Canadian Studies and a MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
In the federal government he began his management career as a Director of Policy at what is now Indigenous Affairs and ended his government career from 1988-1996 as Deputy Secretary of two branches of Treasury Board- Administrative Policy and the Program Branch.
In 1996, he was recruited to be President of the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada which he led for 19 years.
Throughout his career as both a public sector executive and association president, Richard developed and taught courses in the Masters in Public Policy and Administration program at Carleton University. He developed a course titled the Politics of Management: Thinking Like a Manager which he taught for over 27 years. This course is now a core course in the MPPA public management stream and now is titled Public Management in Practice. Richard continues to teach one of the three sections of the course along with two other professors- Chris Stoney and Rob Shepherd.
Towards the end of his association career, Richard took advantage of his association experience and wrote another book Leading Business Associations: Making Successful Transitions, which is the textbook for a national course on Leading Associations and Non-Profits. This course is provided each spring as a one week intensive course. It is a key part of the national non-profit leadership program at Carleton.
Author’s Titles:
Leading Business Associations ─ Making Successful Transitions
The Politics of Management ─ Thinking Like a Manager
