meet david harkins

 dave harkins

the snapshot.

I am a facilitator, teacher, and speaker.

I teach organizations and individuals how to successfully overcome their inability, and sometimes their unwillingness, to change.  I facilitate the creation of new road maps to guide the journey from the present to the future. I reduce the time between “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” and “Wow! What an achievement!”

I believe perspective defines happiness, a positive attitude enables success, and possibilities exist for everything.

My job is to make ideas real.

 

the history lesson.

I was born in capital city of West Virginia the year John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I cheered Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon, watched solar eclipses through a color-film negative, and listened to music on 8-Track tapes. I watched President Nixon resign his office, owned a first edition Sony® Walkman, and remember my latitude and longitude when both Harry Chapin and John Lennon died.

Growing up I spent more than my fair share of time grounded to my bedroom, where I wisely used the time engineer and flight-test perfect paper airplanes elaborately decorated, perhaps unwisely upon reflection, with the phrase, “Help!!! I’m being held captive by a wicked witch!”, from my window into the back yard where my mother often found them. When I wasn’t being held in captivity, I survived walks through protesting parents during the Kanawha County Textbook Controversy, was interested enough to learn New Math, rose many mornings at 5:00 AM to deliver newspapers, and I learned how to march and play the trombone at the same time.

I set off for college to become a dentist, but organic chemistry got the better of me and a wise Chemistry professor encouraged the pursuit of a different career. A wiser English professor suggested I consider becoming a writer. Unfortunately, my parents had no room in the basement for me to make a home, so I choose life in marketing and advertising—the closest fields I could find to writing that actually paid enough to allow me to get my own place.

Once on my own, I fell into a successful career leading marketing and organizational change for companies both small and large.  I have worked in many industries and been fortunate enough to have held senior positions with or advised many well-known organizations including: Alzheimer’s Association (National), American Bar Association (National), Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, Cargill Ag Horizons, Disabled American Veterans (National), Domino’s Pizza, Geneer, Microsoft, PinPoint Marketing, and Subway to name just a few.

I am an avid student of emerging—yet useful—technology, cultural change, and human behavior.  I’m a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars on these, and related marketing topics.