Salem Richard

Richard Salem is an Improv Comedy Performer and is a member of he Board of Director fFr Parade of nations For The Developmentally Challenged, as Treasurer & Chief Governance Officer. In addition, he is a security graphic designer who started out as a Mechanical Engineering Technologist in 1986. While in school, he was exposed to the first Computer-Aided-Design programs available for the new personal computer. There was no one to teach it, so Richard, motivated by his hatred of manual drafting, taught himself. He learned well and quickly, and the college hired him to write and teach their first AutoCAD course. Richard learned many other CAD programs, teaching and consulting to the throng that glommed onto the CAD phenomenon. Converting paper drawings for use as digital files led to map publishing, where Richard found a way to make high-quality digital negatives for printing large maps - the first of their kind. He was published on the topic in trade publications and his work was featured at trade shows internationally. Always the tinkerer, Richard, fascinated by the artwork on banknotes, submitted some of his digital versions to a local banknote company. Thus began his adventure with security graphics, a 25 year affair involving every type of document of value you can imagine. Richard went on to write Dove, the Document of Value Engine, a suite of programs for creating security graphics, and was awarded a patent for a digital security graphic screening system, DoubleTake. He resides in Long Sault with his partner, two teenage step-kids, and the Skype images of his two grown sons. In his spare time, Richard works with the developmentally challenged, and is the current custodian and facilitator of a weekly improvisational comedy workshop in Ottawa.