Dr. Richard P. Garvin, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. and spent his formative years in Tennessee. He began a career in commercial real estate in 2005 when he co-founded Crown Park Development, LLC a multimillion-dollar commercial real estate company. During this time, he also served as
a VP of a healthcare company. Richard specialized in land development, developing physician office plazas, and commercial real estate leases in Middle Tennessee. After a few years in real estate Richard pursued a career in politics where he served on the planning commission and historic zoning commission in Tennessee. Also, during this time he became a Leadership Rutherford graduate, Rotary Club member, Paul Harris Fellow, and served on several community boards such as Court Appointed Special Advocates, Library board, and YMCA board and a few others. He later qualified to run for an unsuccessful bid for state representative in a newly formed district.

Richard earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Counseling from Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Garvin’s clinical experience includes
working as a psychotherapist. Richard’s specialty is working with transracial adoption families. Transracial adoption (or interracial adoption) refers to the adoption of a child that is of a different race than the adoptive parents. For the past eight years Richard has worked with Monroe Harding a non-profit organization to provide healing and opportunities for vulnerable young people and children in foster care. Dr. Garvin focuses his attention on being a research scientist and professor in Clinical Counseling at Tennessee State University. His research interests are race-based traumatic stress, africultural coping, and academic self-efficacy. As a research scientist Dr. Garvin currently works with a multimillion-dollar National Institute of Health (NIH) grant in cancer research. He serves as a co-investigator on the cancer outreach core in a three-institution partnership with Meharry Medical College, Vanderbilt University, and Tennessee State University (MVTCP) https://www.mvtcp.org/.

In 2023, Richard and his wife, Dr. Natara Garvin decided to return to real estate and founded Capital City, LLC a multi-million- dollar multi-family residential company. When Richard is not working, he enjoys traveling internationally with his wife and their two children (Richard III and Harper),
and spending time with his Labradoodle fur baby, Rex.