David completed his first novel, We Hold These Truths, on October 3, 2015. The winding road to now began three decades ago in Washington, D.C. where he was born and raised. He was to be a lawyer, it was decided, and that was that. We plan, God laughs, and so it goes. David attended D.C. public schools prior to entering high school in 1996, graduated in 2000 from Gonzaga College High School—an all boys Jesuit institution—and received a B.A. in History from Yale College in 2004, cum laude.

Upon graduation, David returned to D.C. where he spent two years as a paralegal at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP. In the fall of 2006, he began studies at Harvard Law School and received his J.D. in 2009. Eager to test the popular assumption among many Democrats that Barack Obama’s election had permanently changed prospects for talented minority candidates, David moved to Raleigh, North Carolina where he assumed the joint roles of deputy campaign manager and senior advisor for African-American U.S. Senate candidate Ken Lewis (Harvard Law School ’86). This stint in North Carolina entirely transformed his understanding of American race politics. Moreover, David became intimately familiar with the still lingering barriers to a politics of inclusion so many folks incorrectly believed had been demolished by the historic election of America’s first African-American commander-in-chief.

In the fall of 2010, David moved to New York City to join the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. During his three years at Cravath, David practiced in the Securities, Banking and Mergers & Acquisitions groups. Longing to be near family, David returned to D.C. in August of 2013 where he was hired as an associate in the Corporate Finance and Capital Markets group at Dechert LLP. After a fruitful year at Dechert, David decided that he could no longer delay the pursuit of his ultimate calling: writing fiction to inspire young people to take ownership of America’s social and political transformation—and ultimately insure the permanence of a politics of inclusion—through definitive, unrelenting action. To that end, David left the practice of law on October 15, 2014 to complete a political novel he began writing near the end of his stint in North Carolina.

After several months of shopping his manuscript with the usual suspects in Manhattan, David took a leap of faith and decided to self-publish. He believes that there is a reason why things don’t always go as planned, that there is beauty to be discovered and embraced in the gap between expectations and outcomes—and that these moments should not be immediately characterized as failure.  Such moments are ultimately defined, he contends, by how you perceive them, and most importantly, by what you do next. As a consequence, what many call failure David sees as opportunity hiding in dark shadows that most folks don’t take time to explore. And so, after months of shadow exploration, he is thrilled to report that We Hold These Truths was released on November 4, 2016.

David currently writes and comments extensively on the intersection of American politics, race, sports, popular culture, and his first love, music. In his spare time—frequently well past the midnight hour—he continues work on his second novel. And so it goes…

“Embrace the struggle—it is an essential element of the subsequent success.”