Speaker

Christopher Richardson is an immigration attorney, consultant, and former U.S. Diplomat. As a U.S. diplomat, Richardson served in Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Spain. He won numerous State Department awards including Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. He is a native of Charleston, South Carolina.

Richardson is currently the General Counsel and COO of BDV Solutions, a Greenville-based consulting company specializing in legal immigration solutions to help resolve labor shortages in industries across the United States. His company works with hundreds of companies including Chick-Fil-A, McDonalds, Wendy’s, and thousands of foreign nationals from around the world. He also the founder of Argo, LLC, a consulting firm of former U.S. diplomats who provide advice on the immigration process. Richardson also manages his own immigration law practice - Cooper Richardson, PA.

Richardson is a thought leader on race and immigration. He has been featured in Mother Jones, Slate Magazine, Reuters, NPR,  Embedded, All Things Considered, SCOTUS Blog, BBC, Georgia Public Radio, ProPublica, Intercept, and the Atlanta Constitution Journal.  He has also been interviewed on MSNBC, CNN and CBS.  Richardson has written several well-received opinion columns for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, The Hill, and the Nation about immigration policy and race under Presidents Trump and Obama. His New York Times op-ed on diversity at the State Department spurred a Congressional bill on diversity which Richardson helped write. In addition, the Biden Administration, based on that op-ed, created the first ever Chief Diversity Officer for the State Department.

He has advised U.S. Senators and House members on a wide range of immigration and State Department issues including the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, the various travel bans, and diversity. He chaired the team that Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s immigration policy proposals and worked on immigration policy for Joe Biden’s campaign.

He is a graduate of Duke University School of Law and graduated summa cum laude from Emory University in 2003. He is also the co-author of the Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement (2014).