In 1975, Richard graduated Cornell University with a BS in Industrial and Labor Relations and started Nutri-Foods International, a company that manufactured and distributed Guido's Italian Ices and frozen juice bars. He built factories in New York and California and Guido’s fruit juicees became the number 1 selling frozen novelty in the US. He took the company public in 1984 and sold it to The Coca Cola Company in 1985 where they renamed the product "Minute Maid Fruit Juicees." After the acquisition, Mr. Jaffe remained President of Nutri-Foods and served on the executive operating committee of The Coca Cola Foods Division for the next 2 years.In 1988, Richard was introduced to a businessman who wanted to start a latex glove company. With the exploding AIDS epidemic and the government declaration of universal precautions, every health care worker needed to wear gloves and change them between each patient. Those two events created an enormous glove shortage... They then launched his second company, SafeSkin Corp.In 1989, SafeSkin was granted FDA approval to market the first hypoallergenic latex exam glove. The company also developed the first hypoallergenic powder free latex exam glove in 1990. Demand was so great, production ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for eight years and couldn't keep up. By 2000, Safeskin was still 50% of the powder free latex glove business in the US and were making 6.5 billion gloves a year!" Under Richard's leadership, SafeSkin went public in 1993, was voted Forbes Magazine's "Best Small Company in America" in 1996 and was purchased by Kimberly Clark Corporation in 2000.In 2007 as the Avian flu expanded, Richard was hired as CEO of a novel antimicrobial respirator company called SafeLife. They quickly scaled up production of N95 and N99 respirators in Vermont and Malaysia to fill the urgent demand, then sold the company in 2012 after the Avian Flu pandemic subsided. In 2004, Richard became a part owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and in 2007 he published a book of poetry entitled Inner Peace and Happiness–Reflections to Grow Your Soul. In 2019, he and his daughter Charly published a book entitled “Turning Crisis into Success.” Richard currently mentors new entrepreneurs on starting and scaling new ventures.