Kaptivate Life creates space to move beyond the noise, see with greater clarity, and engage more fully—with your life, your leadership, and the choices before you.

About David

Seeing differently changes what becomes possible.

I was born in the Bronx to parents from the medical world, a surgeon and a nurse. Medicine, however, was not going to be my path. I discovered this in Pre-Med 101 while attempting to hit a frog on the back of the head in a science lab. Somewhere between the frog and the smell of formaldehyde came a moment of remarkable clarity: this was not for me.

So yes, I'm a New Yorker in the truest sense. I still live in New York City and feel deeply connected to it, from the NBA Champion Knicks to the other soon-to-be-champion New York teams. I love sports, competition, and everything that comes with being a fan: anticipation, disappointment, irrational hope, extraordinary highs, and the inevitable return for more. In some ways, it's not a bad metaphor for life.

But my perspective has been shaped far beyond New York. I lived in London, spent part of my life in Japan, and have traveled extensively. Different cultures, people, businesses, successes, failures, and experiences have all changed the way I see the world. I value honesty and humanity. I listen. I observe. I ask questions. And I try, wherever I am, to notice what is actually happening rather than what I expected to see.

I've been described as an optimist, an epicurean, and a long list of other things, some considerably less flattering. For a long time, I was chasing success. When I was younger, I'm not sure I could have told you exactly what success meant. I knew I wanted it. Money was certainly part of it. So were status, achievement, influence, and the satisfaction of winning. I wanted to build something, accomplish something, and have something to show for it. Some might call that ambition. Some might call it greed. Both probably contain a little truth. What I sensed even then, though, was that there had to be something more.

Over 22 years at Goldman Sachs, I experienced success in global financial markets and learned about risk, judgment, leadership, pressure, money, people, and myself. I had the privilege of working alongside extraordinarily intelligent and dynamic individuals from vastly different backgrounds and cultures. Then came a year at a hedge fund that I describe quite simply as failure. After that came more than a decade co-founding and reinventing a music technology start-up, a roller coaster of ideas, pivots, breakthroughs, "almosts," and "maybes" that ultimately ended in what we called a soft landing. In the start-up world, they generally call that failure too. And somewhere within all of this came marriage, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and more than a decade of parenting, quite successfully thus far, although, as the British would say, you'll have to "ask the missus" about the husband part.

Somewhere along the way, my definition of success changed. Perhaps that is the most important part of the story. I no longer see life simply through the binary lens of success and failure. Both have taught me too much for either label to be particularly useful.

These days, I'm interested in something else. I teach. I sit. I notice. I live. And I help other people do more of the same. Not by abandoning ambition, achievement, leadership, or financial success. I understand those worlds too well to pretend they don't matter. But I've also learned that ambition and achievement can have a momentum of their own. You reach one goal and, almost without noticing, you're already focused on the next. There's nothing wrong with wanting more — I still do. I've simply become more interested in understanding what drives that wanting, and in being present enough to appreciate where I am before racing toward where I think I need to be.

That shift in perspective is a large part of what brought me to the work I do today. I believe there is another way to move through all of it. That is where my work begins.

I work with individuals, leaders, teams, and businesses. Sometimes I teach. Sometimes I advise. Sometimes my most useful contribution is asking the question no one else in the room is asking. And sometimes it is simply listening. I don't arrive believing I have all of your answers. I believe many of them are already there.

What I can bring is perspective, shaped by decades in global finance, entrepreneurship, leadership, mindfulness, parenting, travel, success, failure, and the experience of watching people navigate extraordinary pressure and change. My work is about creating enough space to see what is actually in front of us. To recognize the patterns we repeat. To question the stories we tell ourselves. To understand what is driving us. To become more comfortable with uncertainty. And ultimately, to make choices with greater awareness and intention.

Because mindfulness, to me, isn't about escaping the complexity of modern life. It's about learning how to be fully present within it.

So, who am I today? I have educational degrees, certifications in mindfulness and leadership, 22 years at Goldman Sachs, entrepreneurial and philanthropic experience, and decades of watching, listening, learning, succeeding, failing, traveling, parenting, questioning, and changing. All of that matters, but none of it, on its own, is the point. The point is what I've learned from it, and how I can use that experience to help you see something in yourself, your leadership, your business, or your life that perhaps you haven't been able to see before.

I'm here for that. Let's go.