David Preston

Happiness is winning as a team.

From the moment he takes the stage, David joins your audience to create a collective, transformational experience. His inspiring, humorous talks convey expert insights that create immediate and lasting impact. Your audience won't just be entertained and informed – they will leave with new ideas and skills that will help them achieve extraordinary outcomes worth celebrating.

Process. David will tailor his talk to your event theme and your goals. Based on your input, David will integrate concepts and strategies that your people need.

Results. Your people will connect the dots between their experiences and new/complex concepts (how is your anterior midcingulate cortex today?) through unforgettable illustrations and stories that will have them laughing, crying, and talking about the experience for a long time to come.

David is an expert in organizational and individual development. As a consultant, David has helped startups, professional service firms, government agencies, schools, nonprofits, and Fortune 500 companies transform their cultures and improve their performance. As an educator, David created the model for Open-Source Learning that supported a global learning community through the pandemic. He once visited a high school student's parents at home – in Mongolia. He even buckled up and trusted a teenage student driver… to fly an airplane.

Your audience will join David on these adventures and more as they discover the keys to their own passionate curiosity. Applying David's principles and strategies of Open-Source Learning will help each participant achieve a goal – even before the talk is over! – that will help them transform their dreams into reality.

Success requires action. Please take the next step and schedule a meeting with David to discuss your event. You'll be glad you did. Whether you’re learning in school, at work, or on your own, the experience is FUN and the results are consistently spectacular. In addition to doing their day jobs better, David’s clients and students have led expeditions around the world, created businesses and investment funds, improved organizational performance in metrics such as sales and retention, produced albums with international collaborators, and – most importantly – rediscovered the sense of wonder that drives them to live their best lives.

Special for 2025: David’s first book on Open-Source Learning, ACADEMY OF ONE, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2021. His next book, THE SIXTH FITNESS, is currently in the works – and your audience can participate. If you book an event with David in 2025, he will create an additional, informal session for your audience that includes a sneak preview, a complimentary consultation, and an advance reviewer group discount on the book.

Audiences around the world have consistently raved about the information and energy they take away from David’s talks at events like TEDx, the Dent Conference, the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), the Macarthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning Conference, and corporate/association gatherings such as the National Council of Teachers of English, the International Conference on Critical Thinking, the annual meeting of the Royal Geographic Society in London, and more.

David completed his Ph.D. in Educational Policy & Organizational Management at UCLA, where he taught for eleven years in the Communication Studies department, the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, the Anderson School of Management, and Business & Management Extension. David’s consulting clients have ranged from Fortune 500 companies such as Starbucks and Sony to nonprofit organizations and technology startups. David began teaching English in California high schools in 2004. When the coronavirus pandemic closed campuses in 2020, David’s students launched the Open-Source Learning Academy and continued to thrive online. David maintains an active research agenda; most recently he wrote a chapter on open source education technology for a textbook in the Department of Computer Systems at the University of São Paulo. David’s most recent keynote was at the EdPlus Innovate Conference in St. Louis. His most recent Ironman triathlon was Oceanside 70.3. He lives in Palm Springs, CA with his wife and three children.