Rich Hartvigsen spoke at the Public Affairs Career Lecture Series and is Vice President of Global Government and Industry Affairs for Nu Skin Enterprises. He spoke about his career at Nu Skin Enterprises in the legal area of direct selling and marketing a broad range of personal care and nutritional supplement products through a network of independent distributors numbering nearly 800,000 individuals in fifty‐one countries around the world.
Nu Skin was founded in 1984 and launched an initial public offering for its Asia Pacific markets on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996. Nu Skin’s full, global operations are now represented on the New York Stock Exchange and are traded under the symbol NUS. Nu Skin Enterprises reported global sales of over US $1.5 billion in 2010. The global revenues of Nu Skin have continued to grow significantly over the years of global economic recession. Rich has been in the legal group of Nu Skin for twenty two years and has served in various roles including General Counsel and General Counsel of International Operations.
He has been involved in the establishment of most of Nu Skin’s international markets and particularly active in the establishment of the company’s operations in seventeen of the twenty one member economies of APEC. In addition to the United States, Nu Skin’s APEC markets include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, The People’s Republic of China, Mexico and Russia. He joined the company in 1989, fortuitously, the year of the founding of APEC. At the time, their company name, Nu Skin International, was more accurately a goal statement since they were only operational in the United States. However, we quickly developed ambitious plans to expand our business internationally and have since opened fifty additional international markets.