Richard B. Hirst

Richard B. Hirst

Richard “Ben” Hirst is senior vice president and general counsel for Delta Air Lines.

Before joining Delta in 2008, Ben served as Northwest Airlines’ senior vice president – Corporate Affairs and General Counsel. He began at Northwest in 1990 as senior vice president – General Counsel and in 1994 assumed responsibility for Corporate Affairs. In 1999, Ben left Northwest to become general counsel of the Minnesota Twins, before being named executive vice president and general counsel of Burger King Corporation and later executive vice president and chief legal officer of KB Home. In 2007, Ben returned to Northwest to oversee the company’s legal affairs and internal and external communications.

Before joining Northwest, Hirst was vice president – General Counsel and Secretary at Continental Airlines from 1986 to 1990. Prior to that, he was associate professor of Law at the University of Puget Sound Law School in Tacoma, Wash., and during the deregulation of the airline industry was assistant to the director of International and Domestic Aviation for the Civil Aeronautics Board. In his early career Ben was in private law practice in Vermont and served as a law clerk in U.S. District Court in Vermont. While in college he spent a year as a reporter on the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin.

Ben graduated from Harvard College in 1969 and Harvard Law School in 1972.