Hi, I’m David

I love what I do, and I feel so lucky to help people find their voices, their hearts, and meet their goals.

Though I have extensive training and many wise teachers, my own journey of transformation has been my greatest teacher. I have lived the questions that challenged me, and embodied the tools used in my practice through experience. I leaned on these tools to survive a divorce and engage in conscious co-parenting, soul level self-expansion, several reinventions, and trans-personal healing. I know the tools work, first hand.

At heart, and by practice, I am an artist and a ritualist. I work with the human soul as my medium, and ritual practices as my tools. In this way, my life has become somewhat a work of art.

I am attracted to existing organic and natural systems. As a matter of values, I learn from and embrace myself (and others) as a part of nature and therefore a part of her systems. I am at my happiest in nature, bare feet, a crackling fire, good company, song, dance, poetry, and the stories that shaped us being celebrated. I aim to bring that energy to every session.  

My coaching journey started because I needed it to.

In 2013 I was running a culinary arts education program at a non-profit educational farm in Pescadero, CA…

It was my dream job at the time. I was teaching my passions for food, healthy relationship with land, and soft skills to teens about how to navigate life, relationships, and communication. Even though my title was “educator”, I was coaching. 

At that time, the news had been alive with #metoo and #blaacklivesmatter movements. I was 34 years old and, though I’d been in activism for well over a decade, I was deeply overwhelmed about how to engage with the ecological and humanitarian issues that plague us. I was a new father, and like many new fathers, I wanted to fix the world my son was inheriting.

After years of working in social activism, social services, and with foster teens I later turned to permaculture, the slow food movement, and urban agriculture. This landed me at my aforementioned dream job.

Through all of this, I could see how, at root, relational problems were tied to the destruction of our planet. Our neglect and disrespect for humanity was emblematic of our relationship with our planet. Patriarchy, racism, and fear were destroying our access to life just as they were destroying relationships.

In my quest for answers my therapist-mentor David Zimmerman gave me a copy of Robert Bly’s Iron John (a book about men), initiating my return back across the threshold to men’s work. This planted the seed for Iron John Coaching which was the name of my practice until 2025.

As my work and the political and social climate has evolved so has my deep mission to help humanity navigate changing social and environmental climates (poly-crises) through mastery of relational tools. My belief remains strong that the best ecological solutions require human healing and relationship building.