David is a native of the Carolinas and has lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, for more than forty years. He was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and educated in public schools there. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics and a Master’s Degree in International Business from the University of South Carolina. As a part of his graduate school work, he spent a year living in Germany. He retains a little of what was once a fluency in German. 

For nearly thirty years David held executive positions in international companies in the industrial sector. He worked with companies owned by German, Japanese, Swiss and Kuwaiti parents. In his last such role he led the global mining products group of a Bain Capital-owned firm; this group employed more than 3000 people in 15 operations in nine countries.

In 2003 David made a major career shift, joining the Olympic Movement as CEO of the US federation governing paddling sports. In this role, he represented these sports in the US Olympic Committee and in the International Canoe Federation. He was a member of the US delegation at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens and the 2008 Games in Beijing. He was involved in the development of the US National Whitewater Center in Charlotte and represented the US Olympic Committee on the Board of the Center during its early years of operation.

Throughout his various careers, David has been active in community affairs, serving on numerous boards and committees of civic and arts organizations. At the same time, he has also supported the emergence of new companies as an angel investor. In the year following the Beijing Games, David left the sports world and focused on helping several of these young ventures. Let’s call that career 3.0. As an early-stage investor, he has seen both the thrill of success and the agony of failure. 

For several years now David has made writing his primary focus (career 4.0?). He is a member of numerous local writing organizations and has participated in several prominent writing conferences, including the Table Rock Conference at Wildacres, the Writing in Place Conference at Wofford College and the Muse and the Marketplace Conference in Boston.  He has “completed” (a very nebulous construct for a novelist!) two books and has several others in process. You can read about these and his plans for their publication in the works section and in his musings posted here.

David is still madly in love with his wife Allie after more than fifty years. A published non-fiction writer and college-level English teacher, she is a constant inspiration, uncompromising editor/critic and unwavering supporter. He is also immensely proud of their two extraordinary grown children, Zoe and Eli.