Richeson became an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 2000. She was a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. In 2005, she moved to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she held appointments in the Department of Psychology and Department of African American Studies (by courtesy) and was a faculty fellow of the Institute for Policy Research and the Center on Social Disparities and Health. She was appointed as the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair between 2013 and 2016. She joined the faculty at Yale University in 2016, where she is the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology and Director of the Social Perception and Communication Lab. She is endeavoring in the translation of empirical research into the practical application of knowledge. For example, she is currently the faculty fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University and the affiliated external scholar of the Stone Center on Socioeconomic Inequality in the City University of New York. She also serves as an executive committee member on the Societal Experts Action Network, which is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
