David Peck

Hello, I’m David Peck, and I welcome you to The Recovering Leader. My goal in everything I write and share here is to help you achieve your intentions as a leader, or learning leader, and in doing so, make the world a better place, one leader at a time.

I really would love it if you find something here helpful, challenging or pragmatic about leadership – among the 600+ posts over the last six years -- that you can use and/or share with others. If not, let me know what I’m missing…

My topics come from things I’ve noticed or learned both from my own career as a financial services and tech exec—lessons from failures and some from successes—and from work with my leader clients as an executive coach over the last 10 years. I would say the content is “ripped from the headlines” of actual people running actual enterprises, anonymized, of course, for privacy / confidentiality.

Optional Biographical Stuff – please don’t read this unless you want to be bored…

For the last six years, my family and I have lived in Palm Springs, California. (I/we have also lived in San Francisco, Boston, DC, and NYC.) The beautiful desert was our dream, but we’re young and restless, and thinking of where to go next (in California) that will be more, well, vibrant. But we must await great offers and/or for the fate versus intention compass to stop spinning.

Professionally, I’ve been in the business world since 1986. I know it sounds cliché, but I actually DID start in the mailroom (of a bank outside of Boston,) shortly after ending a brief and, I will admit, not-too-promising career in the performing arts. With a broken foot (a stage injury) covered in a cast, I made my way to the mail room at BayBank / Waltham at age 24, because, in my literal-mindedness, “banks have money, and I’m broke.”

My first decade took me from the mailroom to bank teller to mutual fund telephone representative to project manager to PriceWaterhouse consulting to Charles Schwab—there I joined as a VP in projects. Nine years later I left Schwab, having made it to COO of a division. While everyone called me “brave” (i.e., “Crazy”) to jump ship from the big title, spot at the table, and happy paycheck, I knew I needed to follow a path with heart.

Working with my own coach at that point, I then went back to school (Georgetown University) and got certified as a Leadership Coach (in 2003), and have since been an executive coach, mostly with Goodstone Group, LLC.

While I very much miss being “a leader” at times, I love my work, particularly when I see proof my coaching is making a difference for clients – in their careers/lives, and those of the people they lead.

My clients are leaders, managers, and executive teams, and engagements range from upgrading results, CEO succession and promotion readiness, exec team development, new role / new org transition, to fine tuning leadership. I coach clients in aerospace, financial services, professional services, retail, commercial and residential development, defense, health care, energy, manufacturing, technology, materials, property management, travel/leisure, and recruiting. I’ve worked with clients in the U.S. and abroad, including in Australia, the EU, Singapore, and Canada.