Richard Allan

Richard Allan joined Facebook in June 2009 to lead the company’s public policy work in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Richard works on a portfolio of issues including privacy, online child safety, freedom of expression, e-commerce regulation and public sector uses of social media, Richard also appears regularly in the media as a spokesperson for Facebook.

Before joining Facebook, Richard was European Government Affairs Director for Cisco from September 2005. From 2008 to 2009 Richard was Chair of the UK Cabinet Office’s Power of Information Task Force working on improving the use of government data.

Richard was an elected Member of the UK Parliament representing Sheffield Hallam between 1997 and 2005, and was appointed to the House of Lords in 2010.

In the early part of his career Richard was an archaeologist and created software for the UK’s National Health Service - he remains equally fond of Latin and SQL.