Richard M. Walden is President, CEO and Founder of Operation USA (also known as Operation California), a Los Angeles-based nongovernmental organization specializing in disaster relief as well as international and domestic health care and economic development projects.

Privately funded, Operation USA has worked in 90 countries since 1979 and has provided over $250 million in aid and development assistance. Operation USA currently has long-term development projects planned, supervised and evaluated by Walden in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia and Ethiopia. Operation USA has also been active in Iraq, the Balkans, Turkey, Georgia, China, Taiwan, North Korea and East Timor. In response to the conflict in Afghanistan, Operation USA sent $1.2 million worth of medicines; and, to Iraq, in 2003, $1.8 million in hospital supplies. After the 2004 quake in Bam, Iran, Operation USA sent a 747 cargo jet with emergency supplies and funded a health center and women’s clinic in Bam. The 2004 Tsunami and 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were among Operation USA’s most daunting challenges—managing a relief and recovery program involving airlifts and sea shipments of $11.5 million in supplies and expenditures of $4 million for the Tsunami-affected region; and, over $700,000 in cash grants to health clinics and $8 million in emergency supplies to the affected Gulf Coast states.

Operation USA was awarded the President's Volunteer Action Award by the WhiteHouse in 1983 for the organization's work as the first U.S. NGO to provide relief to Cambodia and Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War (1979). Under Walden’s leadership, Operation USA has scored a number of “firsts” among US NGOs involved in international relief—flying in aid to Cambodia, Vietnam, Poland, Bosnia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo/Zaire, North Korea and The Philippines during or immediately after disasters and/or conflicts have occurred.

Walden’s Operation USA shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize as a key member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Walden also coordinated work with UNESCO, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories to find new and quicker solutions to the landmine problem as well as technology to search for new water sources in countries suffering the effects of drought. The use of “EarthRadar” to locate underground water sources, a use which Walden found and advocated, has been termed “unparalleled” by UNESCO’s Chief of Water Resources.

Walden is also an active California-licensed attorney who is specialized in civil rights and health care issues; and, served as Commissioner of Hospitals for the State of California (1977-82) under former Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

Walden holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's College of Arts & Sciences (1968) and attended the Wharton School of Finance (1964-66); he earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.(1972). He also studied history, economics, psychology and African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles. He taught undergraduate law at the University of California at San Diego. In 1974-1975, he set up the Legal Aid Society of San Diego (CA) County’s Health Law Center. Walden has maintained membership in the state Bars of California (1975) and Pennsylvania (1972).

From 1972-1974, he served as Deputy General Counsel of the New York City Health Services Administration under Mayor John Lindsay; and, has been a consultant to various government and private agencies on both health care and international development issues.

Walden currently serves on the boards of InterAction, a consortium of 165 international nongovernmental organizations of which Walden was a co-founder in 1984, and of the Institute for International Mediation & Conflict Resolution in Washington, D.C. where he has taught conflict resolution strategies at seminars in The Hague and in Prague. He also served on the Advisory Board of The Asia Society and is an elected member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.