As executive director, he executes on the Haas goals of: 

• Helping students develop the skills, tools, and strategic frameworks for ‘path bending’ leadership,
• Giving students hands-on experience in design thinking and corporate innovation processes, and 
• Fostering collaboration between Haas and industry, supporting the school’s leadership as a hub for the evolving field of design-thinking and human centered innovation in corporate settings.

As a continuing lecturer, he developed and teaches a variety of MBA-level applied innovation, foresight, and design thinking courses, including core courses and capstone electives covering applied innovation and designing technology for positive impact. Additionally, he is faculty director for the Berkeley summer program in Geneva, Switzerland – focused on business innovation for sustainability and positive impact – and teaches related responsible business courses at UC Berkeley through Haas, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and The Rausser College of Natural Resources.  

Dave has worked with scores of outside firms such as Adobe, BASF, Clorox, Dow, Genentech, Harman, HP, Intel, Levi’s and PayPal on issues of innovation, change, and growth. He has coached thousands of students and executives to collectively solve problems, coalesce as teams, and work more collaboratively, while developing innovative solutions to ambiguous and difficult issues of culture, performance, and growth.  

Prior to Berkeley, Dave was a former CMO and COO with a background in technology, consumer products, and strategy consulting, and helped build, grow, and eventually sell pioneering ecommerce and ISP businesses, and placed companies on both the Deloitte 50 and INC 500 lists. After a pivot to social entrepreneurship, he became COO of a leading enabler of ethical supply chains, and later founded ClimatePath, a hybrid social venture which cultivates market-based models for CSR and conservation.   He writes and speak frequently on human centered design, innovation, and responsible business, and has published a textbook on technology and innovation strategy. Dave has an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern, and is currently a late career PhD student at Clemson in rhetoric, communication and information design. He earned his B.S. from the Haas School at U.C. Berkeley, where he played football and rugby, and also met future wife.