The DC Growth & Retirement Summit

In the first chapter of his career, David spent decades at the heart of the pensions and investment industry serving as a CEO three times, building an understanding of what it takes to lead organisations through complexity, uncertainty and change.

In his second chapter, David transitioned into a portfolio career, serving as a non-executive utivedirector on the pensions boards of BlackRock, Legal & General, Scottish Widows and the People’s Pension, and as a board member of LIMRA and the Fund Boards Council, two influential research organisations in the pensions and asset management sector. 

He also chaired two organisations in the health sector – the Optimum Health Clinic Foundation and Conscious Life – reflecting a growing conviction that wellbeing and performance are inseparable. 

But between these phases of his career came a period that would profoundly shape everything that followed. For four years, David stepped back from professional life to care for his wife and his father. They passed away within weeks of each other. In the grief and upheaval that followed, David then faced three years of serious illness of his own and it was during this time that ‘mind management’ became more than an intellectual interest. It became a lifeline.

Now, in the third chapter of his career, David has founded Positively Aware, and reinvented himself as an executive coach, helping others learn all the skills of mind management that were a lifesaver for him. His coaching draws on all three chapters. The executive who has been a CEO three times. The non-executive who has sat on four major pensions boards and chaired two health sector organisations. And the human being who discovered, through loss and illness, that learning to manage your own mind is the most important leadership skill of all.