Dr. Richard McDaniel

Dr. McDaniel's dominant interest and career path have featured boardroom decision making and fiduciary risk management as the centerpiece. He is the primary creator of the discipline of Decision Accounting™ and the Ad Hoc Decision Audit™ Technology upon which it is based. 


Previous to his work in corporate governance, Dr. McDaniel developed and adapted various behavioral technologies, including behavioral decision theory and decision analysis, for use in business practice. 

Earlier in his career, Dr. McDaniel was one of five inside advisors to, and representatives of, H.L. Hunt of Dallas (Hunt Oil Company) at a time when Mr. Hunt and J. Paul Getty were regarded as the two wealthiest men in the world. It was during his association with Mr. Hunt that he developed a profound interest in boardroom decision making.
His past positions include: President and Chief Operating Officer of Mortgage Banc of Dallas; Regional General Sales Manager for Pulte Home Corporation in Dallas/Ft. Worth, where he supervised the sales and mortgage lending functions and subsequently developed the first Fannie Mae approved no down payment mortgage in the industry, in the early 80s, by reanalyzing FHA and VA foreclosure data according to different risk assessment criteria.

Dr. McDaniel graduated from Harvard College in 1969 and was nominated by Harvard for a Rhodes Scholarship. He subsequently earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Texas (Arlington), where he specialized in human judgment and complex decision-making under conditions of risk and uncertainty. His doctoral dissertation examined the previously unknown impact of information configuration on risk preferences for financial outcomes equivalent in expected value, but differing in variance, skewness, kurtosis or other central moments of the distribution. 

Dr. McDaniel is a present or past member of the Society of Bayesian Psychologists, the American Psychological Association, and the National Association of Corporate Directors. He is Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Decision Accounting Standards Board and a past member of the board of the ACLU of Texas, Dallas Chapter. Dr. McDaniel previously served as President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Dallas Jazz Orchestra. He is also a member of the Schools Committee of the Harvard Club of Dallas, which organizes and conducts interviews with local high school students applying for admission to Harvard.