David Peterson

Director, Executive Coaching & Leadership at Google

David B. Peterson passed away on May 9, 2023 and was honored to be one of the MG100 coaches. He served on the Advisory Boards of Coaching.com, Executive Development Associates, and NYU’s Executive Coaching and Organizational Consulting program, David co-founded the Institute for Contemporary Leadership which focused on accelerating the development of high-potential leaders and equipping them to deal with disruption, complexity, and transformational change. The Institute provides top leaders with a high-trust peer network, disruptive development experiences, and a personal development advisor/coach to guide their journey.

David earned his Ph.D. in Counseling and Industrial/Organizational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), and the Harvard Institute of Coaching. David was a world-class executive coach and thought leader in executive development for over 30 years. In 2019 he was selected as the #1 Corporate Coach in the world and in 2020 received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his significant contributions to Executive Coaching. His awards included the RHR International Award for Excellence in Consultation (Society of Consulting Psychology), the Outstanding Achievement Award (California Psychological Association), the Vision of Excellence Award (Harvard Institute of Coaching), and a lifetime achievement award from Coaching at Work.

David led Google’s Executive Coaching & Leadership (ECL) team for 10 years, where he built one of the world’s most innovative and high-impact coaching programs. During his tenure at Google, he coached over 400 senior leaders, including more than half of the company’s VPs and SVPs, provided onboarding coaching to all newly hired VPs, led the agile organization design team to help prepare Google to address emergent and disruptive leadership challenges, and designed and facilitated highly-rated workshops on organizational design, coaching skills, scaling your leadership, and decision-making in complexity.