Thrive With Grace.
Hi, I’m David. I coach and speak about resilience the way survivalists train for storms – to navigate uncertaintly and survive impact; this is crisis training, not motivation. You need to know what to do when clarity drops, pressure rises and hope starts to falter. I offer a practical, grounded and tested practice in remaining whole when things go wildly wrong. I know it works because it is based on my real world executive experience – not theory – and it is designed for real condistions, not ideal ones.
There was a point in my life when things stopped working.
Core Offerings
You don’t need to have what comes next figured out.
Pivot is a space to explore change with curiosity — to reflect on what no longer fits, notice what’s emerging, and experiment with what might come next.
I’m not here as a teacher with all the answers. I’m here as a fellow human navigating change too — creating spaces where we can learn from our experiences, ask better questions, encourage one another, and discover what’s possible.
Whether through the newsletter, workshops, or shared conversations, you’re invited to explore your pivot at your own pace.
Thought-provoking talks that challenge how we think about change, uncertainty, and what comes next — combining lived experience, meaningful questions, and practical ideas people can carry into their own pivots.
Thoughtful, support for leaders and teams, or people navigating change, questioning what comes next, or standing at a crossroads — creating space to make sense of where you are, explore what’s possible, and move forward with greater clarity and intention.
Spaces to explore change alongside others — combining meaningful conversation, shared experience, practical exercises, and small experiments that help turn uncertainty into possibility and possibility into a way forward.
The Pathfinder Credo
COACHING & ADVISORY
You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going to begin moving forward.
There are moments when the life, work, role, or identity that once made sense no longer fits in quite the same way.
Sometimes change arrives suddenly. Sometimes it’s chosen. And sometimes it begins as little more than a persistent feeling that something needs to be different.
These moments can leave us searching for answers before we’ve even had the space to understand the questions.
My approach to coaching is different.
I’m not here to tell you who to become or hand you a formula for what comes next. I create space for honest reflection, thoughtful exploration, and practical experimentation — so you can make sense of where you are and begin discovering your own way forward.
Together, we might explore:
- What no longer fits — and what you’re ready to release
- What keeps calling for your attention
- The assumptions, expectations, or identities that may be keeping you in place
- What possibilities are worth becoming curious about
- Small experiments that let you learn without having everything figured out
- How to move forward with greater clarity, intention, and trust in yourself
This isn’t about forcing certainty.
It’s about becoming more comfortable exploring before you know the answer.
Because a pivot rarely happens in one dramatic leap. More often, it unfolds through honest questions, new experiences, unexpected conversations, and small decisions that gradually reveal a different direction.
A different kind of coaching relationship
I don’t see this as a relationship between someone who has the answers and someone who needs them.
We meet as human beings.
I bring questions, perspective, lived experience, and a willingness to sit with uncertainty. You bring your experience, instincts, curiosity, and knowledge of your own life.
Together, we create room to notice what might be difficult to see when you’re standing in the middle of it.
Whether I’m working with an individual, a leader, or a team, the goal isn’t to prescribe the next chapter.
It’s to create the conditions in which it can begin to emerge.
You don’t need to become someone else to move forward.
You may simply need the space to hear what’s already changing — and the courage to explore where it might lead.
Our Approach to Pathfinding
Organizations navigating rapid change
High-performance environments
Professionals facing transition or disruption
Resilience & Coaching
New book released!
Your Invitation
You can join me in this resilience journey – and I invite you not as a relationship of teacher and student, but rather human beings reciprocally benefiting from the sharing of experience and encouragement.
You can subscribe to this blog: HERE
You can post comments if you like – or if you’re not up for that level of vulnerability, you can reach out through my contact page: HERE
Make the Pivot Without Losing Your Center
I help leaders, professionals, and organizations navigate pivotal moments, realign people and priorities, and build the capacity to move forward—without sacrificing trust, well-being, or integrity.
WORKSHOPS & COHORTS
Go deeper. Explore together. Turn insight into action.
Sometimes a conversation or keynote opens the door. A workshop gives us the space to walk through it.
These are interactive, facilitated experiences for individuals, leaders, and teams navigating change, transition, or a moment when the old way of doing things no longer quite fits.
Rather than arriving with predetermined answers, we create the space to slow down, look honestly at where you are, and explore what might be trying to emerge.
Because meaningful change rarely happens by being told to think differently.
It happens when we have the opportunity to reflect, question, experiment, and experience something differently.
Together, we explore questions such as:
- What is changing — and what does that change ask of us?
- What are we holding onto that may no longer serve us?
- Where are old assumptions or ways of working getting in the way?
- What possibilities aren't we seeing yet?
- What could we try before making a bigger commitment?
- What are we learning about the way forward?
From conversation to experimentation
My workshops aren’t designed around sitting back and listening.
We work.
Through guided reflection, meaningful conversation, practical exercises, and small experiments, participants have the opportunity to surface what may be difficult to see in the middle of everyday demands.
For teams, that might mean examining how you respond when circumstances change, where communication or decision-making gets stuck, and what needs to evolve for the team to move forward together.
For individuals and cohorts, it might mean making sense of a personal or professional transition, exploring possibilities, and turning curiosity into something you can actually test.
The goal isn’t to leave with every answer.
It’s to leave with greater clarity about what deserves your attention, what you’re ready to release, and what you’re willing to explore next.
Change becomes different when we explore it together.
There is something powerful about being in a room with people willing to ask honest questions without pretending they already know the answers.
We learn from one another.
We notice things we might not notice alone.
We test assumptions.
We make room for possibility.
And instead of trying to predict the perfect way forward, we begin taking thoughtful steps toward it.
You don’t need the whole map.
Sometimes you just need a place to explore the next part of the journey.
SIGNATURE KEYNOTE
When the Map Stops Working: Finding Your Way Through Change
We like to believe change comes with a plan.
It rarely does.
Careers shift. Organizations evolve. Expectations change. What worked before stops working. And sometimes the person, team, or organization we’ve been no longer quite fits where we’re going.
Our instinct is often to look for certainty — a new plan, a clearer answer, a better map.
But what if moving forward isn’t about having the map?
What if it’s about learning how to navigate when there isn’t one?
When the Map Stops Working is a thought-provoking and deeply human exploration of what happens when we find ourselves between what was and what comes next.
Drawing on lived experience, practical insight, and the principles behind Pivot, this keynote challenges audiences to see uncertainty differently — not simply as something to overcome, but as a space where curiosity, experimentation, and new possibilities can emerge.
Participants are invited to stop asking, “How do I get back to where I was?” and begin asking a more useful question:
“What might be possible from here?”
Audience Takeaways
- Why our instinct to seek certainty can keep us stuck
- How to recognize when an old way of thinking, working, or living no longer fits
- How to stay grounded without needing to know exactly what comes next
- The role curiosity plays in navigating meaningful change
- How small experiments can create clarity when thinking alone cannot
- A practical approach to moving from uncertainty toward possibility and action
Core Ideas
- Release — Recognizing what no longer fits
- Explore — Replacing the pressure for answers with curiosity
- Experiment — Learning through small, intentional action
- Reorient — Using what we discover to find a new direction
- Moving Without a Map — Developing the capacity to act without perfect certainty
This isn’t a keynote about embracing change because change is always good.
And it isn’t about pretending uncertainty is easy.
It’s about something more useful:
Learning to find your way forward when the way forward isn’t obvious.
The Pathfinder Credo
TESTIMONIALS
You can join me in this resilience journey – and I invite you not as a relationship of teacher and student, but rather human beings reciprocally benefiting from the sharing of experience and encouragement.
Resilience & Coaching
Our Blogs
Problems, Perspective, Practice and Grace
One simple practice that I have been using to regain perspective in the middle of difficult problems.
Disappointment, Grudges, and Grace
It’s been well established that holding a grudge against someone will cause more problems for us than the person we are offended with…so why is
Don’t Surrender Your Joy
The title of this post should be enough, and its possible that I will only make it muddy by going any further, but here we