Bio

David Bressler is VP Finan­cial Ser­vices Solu­tions at CA Tech­nolo­gies. He is an expe­ri­enced tech­nol­o­gist who leads peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions to the tech­nol­ogy their busi­ness demands, with­out the frus­tra­tion they expect. David has par­tic­i­pated in more than 10 tech­nol­ogy IPOs, merg­ers, acqui­si­tions, and spin-outs. He has worked in over 25 coun­tries help­ing gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies imple­ment tech­nol­ogy that increases their capa­bil­i­ties and results. David is an accom­plished pub­lic speaker and facil­i­ta­tor with a knack for cre­atively explain­ing com­plex ideas.

David has an MBA in inter­na­tional busi­ness from NYU Stern School of Busi­ness where he grad­u­ated with dis­tinc­tion. David is also an accom­plished ath­lete and coach; he is an expe­di­tion cave and ship­wreck diver, holds black belts in 3 mar­tial arts, and as a mem­ber of the US Karate Team, a two-time medal­ist in the 1989 World Mac­cabiah Games in Israel.

OK, enough with the for­mal stuff…

I use my expe­ri­ence to help cus­tomers syn­the­size ideas in order to human­ize the tech­nol­ogy expe­ri­ence for their customers.

I have trav­eled well over a mil­lion miles, and worked in over 25 dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Typ­i­cally, “worked” means sold tech­nol­ogy into a coun­try (feet-to-dirt), indi­vid­u­ally or as adviser to a sales team, though there have been sit­u­a­tions where I’ve engaged in hands on imple­men­ta­tions as well. Two par­tic­u­lar favorites were kick­ing off a project with the Gov­ern­ment of Sin­ga­pore in 2005, and a project for Siemens in Dres­den in 1998. The Siemens project led to an $8+ mil­lion dol­lar con­tract for TIBCO, in the words of the cus­tomer “because in that one week, I proved we could do every­thing we had been telling them we could do through­out the sales process.” That was the clos­est I’ve ever come to writ­ing code.

Along the way, I’ve spo­ken at a large num­ber of con­fer­ences but regret not keep­ing track! I’m an estab­lished pub­lic speaker, see for your­self in this video blog.

I spe­cial­ize in align­ing a company’s “tech­nol­ogy expe­ri­ence” with their strate­gic objec­tives and brand per­cep­tion. I accom­plish this by help­ing to deliver tech­nol­ogy ini­tia­tives that are so in align­ment with cus­tomer behav­ior as to make the tech­nol­ogy invis­i­ble, and the expe­ri­ence pure “brand immer­sion”. Con­tact or fol­low me (Twit­ter, LinkedIn, Google+) if you’re inter­ested in hear­ing more.

Other Stuff

I’ve been train­ing non-stop in mar­tial arts since 1980. Through the 80’s, I was a mem­ber of the US Karate Team (video), first with the AAU, later with the USA Karate Fed­er­a­tion. Switch­ing to Kendo in the early 90’s, I used the oppor­tu­ni­ties pro­vided by busi­ness travel to train with both the Swedish and Ger­man national teams, as well as sev­eral other dojos through Europe who were beau­ti­fully wel­com­ing. I’m very grate­ful for their hos­pi­tal­ity, even years since, as they were some of the best mem­o­ries and expe­ri­ences of my life. I added iaido (video) to my reper­toire start­ing in 1999, and due to a wrist injury that’s forced my kendo retire­ment, it’s my main prac­tice these days. Any­one inter­ested in what I get out of iaido should read Turn­ing the Mind Into an Ally. I found that book acci­den­tally, and it’s a fan­tas­tic intro­duc­tion to meditation.

I’ve also been doing expedition-class div­ing (video) for quite some time. Read about some excit­ing explo­ration I did in Alaska, where I was the 13^th diver ever to dive the depression-era ship­wreck SS Aleut­ian. Whereas train­ing in mar­tial arts was some­thing I acci­den­tally fell into, I’ve always wanted to be a diver. I had the oppor­tu­nity to work on dive-vessel Seeker until it went out of busi­ness in 2007. Ah, the sto­ries I could tell. Actu­ally, one of my friends has told his story… and it’s one of my favorite books, Shadow Divers.

I swim reg­u­larly. It’s not quite the best thing I got from my MBA @ NYU (it was a very good pro­gram), but being an NYU alum and liv­ing in NYC, I can use the pool for a rel­a­tively small annual fee.

The Com­pa­nies I’ve Worked For

• CA Tech­nolo­gies, Novem­ber 2013 — Present
• Soft­ware AG, August 2011 — Octo­ber 2013
• Bar­clays Wealth, Sep­tem­ber 2010 — Feb­ru­ary 2011
• Progress Soft­ware (acquired Actional), Octo­ber 2002 — August 2010
• Radi­anz (now BT Radi­anz), April 2001 — Sep­tem­ber 2002
• Aether Sys­tems (IPO), June 1999 — Feb­ru­ary 2001
• TIBCO Soft­ware (Teknekron Soft­ware Sys­tems / Reuters; IPO), April 1995 — June 1999
• Bell Atlantic Net­work Inte­gra­tion, April 1994 — April 1995
• Dig­i­tal Net­work Asso­ciates, June 1990 — April 1994
• NeXT Com­puter, Jan­u­ary 1990 — June 1990