JumpStart International

 Richard Ebel

Richard Ebel is currently Vice President at ECC (Environmental Chemical Corporation), where he has worked for more than 20 years in various roles including Sr. Project Manager, Program Manager, Program Director and Vice President. He has concurrently managed up to 200 multi‑disciplined management employees performing cradle‑to‑grave construction and remediation/recovery services. In addition, he has managed ECC’s cost reimbursable work for government contracts as well as other private and public clients.

Ebel’s primary focus over the past three years has been in a direct management role of $700 million of contracts in the Middle-East focused on reconstruction, stabilization and recovery efforts in Iraq. Most recently, he has been working with senior government officials to assist in moving the economic recovery forward in unstable or post-conflict arenas.

Ebel arrived in Iraq in January 2004 to establish business for ECC with the CPA and other US mission areas. It was quickly realized that a business model based upon supporting Iraqi small businesses would help bolster economic development, alleviate the black marketers, and provide security for his company and the communities in which they worked. The model has evolved and changed but the underlying premise remains the same at its core value structure, and is based upon supporting local and regional Iraqi companies to succeed in providing long-term stability and sustainability to the Iraqi business community.

Ebel earned his degree from Washington State University in Environmental Science. His early career was founded in emergency response actions with the US Environmental Protection Agency where he learned how to work within incident command systems, and multi-discipline teams of professionals brought into a community to address a public health crisis. Working in troubled areas, he learned how to incorporate diverse and sometimes aggrieved stakeholders into a mosaic framework that assisted to resolve the crisis and bring stability and growth back to disrupted communities.

Ebel’s generalist background and insatiable curiosity got him into some very unusual management situations and allowed him to explore new ways to approach solutions to complex problems, including a “holistic” method wherein local resources and ideas were sought out and used to incorporate into programs for implementation.