Rich Davino

Managing Director

Rich Davino is our Managing Director. Proud of his twenty-five years in higher education, Rich is a skilled and talented leader with an extremely broad knowledge of how higher ed does (and sometimes doesn’t) work. He is an optimistic pragmatist who will be the first to advocate for the twenty reasons why we can do something versus the three reasons why we cannot.

As a first-generation college student, he fully embraces the experience graduation represents—the acquisition of information and skills that become the knowledge students will depend upon to live long, happy, and productive lives.

“It’s what’s beyond college that really matters,” he says. “Going to college to be a better educated human being is no longer the full picture. We need more focus on how the skills students learn in college will apply to the actual world. That’s why career is imminently important, it’s where we spend most of our waking hours. I want to see Focus Collegiate students thrive in college as they gain skills they can use to navigate the rest of their lives… I’m a big proponent of setting goals and envisioning the future. That vision is a powerful motivator.” His passion for career counseling and education informs everything he does. 

Rich comes to us most recently from Framingham State University where he was the Director of Career Services and Employer Relations and oversaw the operation of a centralized Career Services office serving over 4,000 students and alumni. Prior to Framingham State, Rich was the Executive Director of the Center for Career Education and Advising, and an Adjunct Professor of the Mental Health Counseling Program at Becker College. Before Becker, Rich was Director of Career Planning and Internships at Dean College. He has held similar positions at Boston University and Seton Hall University, and he also has experience in Residential Life at Kean University, Assumption College, and Binghamton University.

He has a Master of Science in Counseling with an emphasis in Student Affairs from State University of New York at Plattsburgh and is CACREP (Council for Accreditation of Counseling & Related Educational) Accredited. He also has a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communications with a Minor in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the same University.