Parsons was accepted by Albany Law School of Union University, New York, where he earned a Juris Doctor in 1971 and finished at the top of his class.

[7] In 1988, he was recruited to serve as chief operating officer of the Dime Savings Bank of New York by CEO Harry W. Albright Jr., who was a former Rockefeller aide.

[6] In 1991, on the recommendation of Nelson's brother Laurance Rockefeller to the then-CEO Steve Ross, Parsons was invited to join Time Warner's board.

The announcement surprised some media experts who expected chief operating officer Robert W. Pittman to take the helm.

He was also Chair of the Apollo Theater Foundation and co-chair of the advisory board of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

[18][19] From the early 1980s through much of the 1990s, Parsons owned a house near the Rockefeller family estate in Pocantico Hills, where his grandfather was once a groundskeeper.

[22] In 2001, United States President George W. Bush selected Parsons to co-chair a commission on Social Security.

After New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson withdrew his name from consideration for the position of Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration, Parsons's name was floated as a possible nominee.

[26] On May 9, 2014, in the wake of the Donald Sterling racial remarks controversy, it was announced that Richard Parsons was appointed the interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers.

[27] In 1968, Parsons married Laura Ann Bush, a community activist with a doctorate in child psychology, who he met at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Though he went into remission after stem-cell therapy, complications in 2018 caused him to step down from his role as interim chairman of the board of CBS.