Richard Hytner

MA LLM (Cambridge) MSc (London)

Richard was Saatchi & Saatchi’s CEO for EMEA and, for 8 years, its Worldwide Deputy Chairman. In 2016, he founded beta baboon to help leaders rip apart, play with, and solve their business problems. Richard’s work as Blue Hat Man involves facilitating candid conversations and more effective collaboration among senior leaders and Board members, helping them to land their best ideas.

Whilst spending much of his career as CEO of creative businesses, Richard prefers leading from the shadows, the subject of his book, Consiglieri: Leading from the Shadows, published by Profile Books. It is a celebration of the craft of leadership that supports, counsels, challenges, and checks the out and out charismatic leader.

At London Business School, Richard teaches on both degree and executive education programmes including on the flagship Senior Executive Programme. He runs an elective core course on Creativity in Business. Richard teaches leaders how to unearth fresh actionable customer and managerial insights; reignite individual, team and organisational creativity; and build purposeful, winning brands and businesses. He also leads a Global Business Experience in South Africa that explores the relationship between creativity and sustainability.

For 5 years, Richard chaired Planting Promise, a sustainable educational enterprise in Sierra Leone; and has been a trustee of the British Heart Foundation. He is currently a Director of Foundation for Leadership through Sport; and supports his wife’s charity, Shop & Drop, a bespoke service to food banks in London, plugging gaps in their provision of urgently needed essentials. When Rupert Murdoch launched a bid for Manchester United in 1998, Richard co-founded what is now the Manchester United Supporters Trust which has campaigned relentlessly to secure fan ownership of football clubs.

Richard graduated from the Meyler Campbell coaching programme in September 2016.