Richard Laurion

Richard currently has returned to private practice as an interpreter, mentor and instructor. He most recently served as Director for two awards through the U.S. Department of Education, Rehabilitation Services Administration. The first award ($4M) was to establish the national Graduation to Certification, Experiential Learning Model training project and the second award ($2M) was to create the Medical, Mental and Behavioral Health Interpreting Project for the CATIE Center at St. Catherine University.

Richard has 35 years of leadership experience developing and managing programs and services in both the public and private sector. Richard has been a mentor and teacher of interpreters since 1988. He has served on local and national boards of directors for the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) and the Conference of Interpreter Trainers. While serving RID, he helped develop the Certification Maintenance Program and the first generalist written test. Richard was one of the few hearing individuals to be chosen chairperson for the Minnesota Commission Serving Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Deaf-Blind Minnesotans.

Much of Richard’s career has focused on the professional development needs of interpreters living in rural and urban areas. He has a reputation for sponsoring innovative and creative educational products and tools for professional development. Many of these products focused on topics of importance to health care such as the national resource site – healthcareinterpreting.org.

Richard has specialized in healthcare and also currently practices as a medical interpreter specializing in urgent, crisis and emergency care. He is often consulted as a nationally recognized expert in healthcare interpreting and a subspecialty in emergency work. Richard is a practitioner in the Emergency On-Call system of the 7-county Twin Cities metro through the Minnesota Hospital Consortium. Richard is an active member of the Medical Interpreter Consortium (MedIC) and serves as their professional development coordinator.