Richard Anderson

Mr. Anderson has spent his entire career doing what others say is not possible. He spent 34 years effecting change in elementary and high school education, teaching for five years and then developing elementary and high school curriculum for marketing and distribution by national text book publishers including Houghton Mifflin, Macmillan/McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall.

Ligature, Inc. a company he founded with a partner, introduced a visual/verbal process for creating textbooks and a shared-venture relationship with publishers that led the industry during an exciting mid-‘80s to mid-‘90s period of innovation. One of the company's series of books was the subject of the New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story.

He is currently the chief executive officer of VillageSoup, a company engaged in a 10-year experiment defining a business model for the Internet age, advancing the traditional community news industry to a community hosting industry.  VillageSoup was awarded an $885,000 grant by the James L. and John S Knight News Challenge in May 2007.

He earned a BA and MA in mathematics from the University of Northern Iowa, and a Ph.D. in Administration of Educational Research and Information Systems from the University of Iowa.