Richard Hartnell is a polymathic organizer, artist, scientist, and naturalist with a career spanning twenty years over thirteen countries.

After being kicked out of community college in his hometown of Bellingham, WA for lingering there too long for fun during a war effort, he left for Oakland, CA to pursue a career in the circus arts that soon found him near the global peak of his chosen art form. He is a co-founder of the Bellingham Circus Guild and a prior resident artist at Flowtoys, the world’s foremost creator of LED performance props.

Given that historic connection between activism and the arts, Richard has sat on several boards of community benefit organizations, including two organizations that lobbied for local policy reform in Bellingham, WA and Santa Cruz, CA that respectively made regional and national news. A former vice president of the board of the People's Land Trust (a landlord-free renter's housing cooperative), he later co-founded a tenants' union that won a lawsuit to protect dozens of live-work art studios from displacement.

As an event organizer, he has started, sustained, or staffed dozens of festivals over the years. He is presently the director of the regional Cascade Juggling Festival and a talent booker for Kindle Northwest, North America’s premier fire festival.

Holding a degree in cognitive neuroscience with a focus on embodiment and psychopharmacology, Richard is a veteran in the world of drug science and policy. He led one of the most active chapters of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (later winning election to its Board of Directors), worked as an analytic biochemist in the early days of California’s recreational cannabis industry, sat as a psychedelic crisis counselor for the Zendo Project and White Bird Rock Med, and served as the VP of Outreach for DanceSafe.

While not caught up in as many exploits as he can pack in, Richard spends time on his tiny permaculture farm in Bellingham, Washington populated by countless food plants and four darling hens.