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David Peterson

Nadja Anne Jul 8, 2021

As Google’s head of Executive Coaching and Leadership, David coaches senior leaders, manages Google’s network of external and internal coaches, and supports leadership, learning, and executive development initiatives at Google. Before joining Google in 2011, David served as leader of world-wide coaching services for PDI Ninth House (now part of Korn Ferry). In addition to coaching top leaders in organizations such as Salesforce, Sandisk, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Target, Wal-Mart, Shell, Genentech, Mayo Clinic, Harvard, and Stanford University, he provided consultation and thought leadership on how to design and manage organizational coaching programs, how to develop high potential leaders and critical talent, and how to accelerate learning and leadership development at all levels. David has published dozens of articles and chapters on coaching, is co-author of Development FIRST: Strategies for Self-Development and Leader as Coach, with over a million copies in print, and co-editor of the Handbook of the Psychology of Coaching and Mentoring. Vikki Brock’s history of coaching (2008, 2012) names David as one of the primary influencers in the field, both for his early influence on the emergence of executive coaching and for continuing to shape the field as someone “on the cutting edge of the profession, doing and saying surprising and thought-provoking things.”