STEPHANIE RICHMOND
Founder & CEO
Stephanie Richmond has had a multifaceted career: lawyer, journalist, lobbyist, entrepreneur, and life coach are all roles she has assumed, both in NY and Washington, D.C. Her B.A. comes from Boston University’s College of Liberal Arts, and her Juris Doctor was completed at Washington College of Law at American University in D.C. in 1973. She is a member of the Bars in D.C. and New York, and was certified as a professional coach at New York University in 2011.​
Most of Stephanie’s early career was spent as a lobbyist, working closely with leading organizations in the entertainment industry on campaigns to protect songwriters and publishers from First Amendment and intellectual property challenges. She also spent time as a reporter, establishing a Washington bureau for an entertainment trade newspaper.
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In the early 1980s, she was responsible for all legislative affairs for the Peace Corps, traveling to Peace Corps projects in Africa as Peace Corps representative, accompanying Congressional delegations and meeting foreign government officials in countries where the Peace Corps had active involvement.
The Deputy Director at the Peace Corps was Naval Commander (ret) Everett Alvarez, Jr., who had been the second longest POW in U.S. history (9 ½ years in Viet Nam). Decades later, that friendship and his encouragement and inspiration would be the primary motivating force behind her founding of Stand Beside Them.​
In the later 80s Richmond moved to New York, married, became a mother, and got involved in real estate. Raising a son with a passion for military history that was infectious, she found herself at civil war re-enactments from the cornfields at Antietam on a foggy dawn morning to the sweltering heat at Gettysburg during Fourth of July. Her son’s bedtime stories were tales of military battles and heroic spitfire pilots. The countless hours of History and Military channels helped instill in her a deep gratitude and admiration for our military, veterans, and their families.
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Stephanie’s specialty as a life coach was coaching people through transitions in life, guiding them to embrace positive change as they searched for a new, more fulfilling purpose. When she came across an in-depth report assessing the needs of returning veterans, the light bulb went off in her head and she knew immediately that she had found her own purpose. After research showed her staggering facts and figures about veteran neglect, mounting unemployment and homelessness, and worse of all shocking suicide rates, she was compelled to take action and Stand Beside Them was born. Gathering up 8 other certified and experienced coaching colleagues, she contacted her old Peace Corps colleague Commander Everett Alverez for advice, and with his encouragement SBT was launched in 2013. The organization now has over 199 coaches in 31 states.