Michael D. Rich

President and Chief Executive Officer, RAND Corporation Business Circle

Michael D. Rich is president and chief executive officer of the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. For more than 40 years, Rich has helped RAND become a leading source of expertise, analysis, and evidence-based ideas in an increasingly complex and polarized policymaking environment.

Rich began his career at RAND as a summer intern in 1975, joining the organization full-time the following year as a researcher focused on U.S. national security issues. He has served in a variety of senior leadership positions at RAND and was instrumental in the creation of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center that provides research and analysis to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the Intelligence Community. He also helped lead RAND's diversification and expansion into international markets—including the establishment of RAND Europe, the RAND Qatar Policy Institute, and RAND Australia.

Since becoming president and CEO in 2011, Rich has focused on extending the impact of RAND's work—challenging the organization to extend its legacy of innovation and helping decisionmakers stay ahead of the curve on the issues that matter most. A champion of RAND's commitment to broadly disseminate findings and help improve the quality of policy discourse, Rich has promoted new and improved ways of sharing RAND's insights and making the organization's work widely accessible. Throughout his career, Rich has also been an enthusiastic supporter of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the world's largest Ph.D. program in policy analysis, where he has taught and advised graduate students and chaired numerous committees.

Rich serves on the governing boards and advisory committees of many policy and service organizations, including the Council for Aid to Education, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, the Everychild Foundation, Santa Monica–UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, and the UCLA Foundation. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the California Bar.

Rich received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.