David W. Crain

David Crain has more than 25 years' experience managing the marketing, strategy, and engineering functions in a corporate setting. Over his career, he served as Director of Markets and Strategies for two Fortune 500 companies: Fluor Corporation and Sempra Energy where he developed his expertise in B2B marketing. While at Fluor, David managed a staff of six MBA market researchers analyzing the marketplace, competitors, partners, merger-and-acquisition targets, and related economic, business and geo-political conditions. He advised Fluor on strategy issues such as branding, mission/vision formulation, market research and segmentation, geographical positioning, and marketing strategies.

In earlier professional activities, David served with the United States Naval Research Center in San Diego where he was responsible for development of microelectronics for anti-submarine warfare systems. It was there, while working on undersea television exploration technology, that he conceived and received the first patent on what became the "1st and Ten" concept introduced on ESPN football telecasts in 1998, now widely used in network sportscasting.

For more than 20 years, David was a Lecturer and Adjunct Professor at Cal Poly Pomona and instructed graduate and undergraduate students in electronics and computer sciences. At USC and Pepperdine, he teaches business-strategy formulation and market research to MBA students. He is past President of the California Chapter of the Strategic Leadership Forum — an international organization dedicated to fostering the art and discipline of strategic planning in business — and in 1999, along with Stan Abraham, co-founded the Association for Strategic Planning, for which he served as its first president during its first four years of existence.

David presently consults to large corporations in marketing and business strategy. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from USC where his dissertation focused on the development of semiconductor materials for flash-memory applications some 25 years before commercialization of the technology. His interests are varied and include video technology and movie-making, collecting motion-picture soundtracks, fitness, hiking, and golf. He has two grown children and resides with his wife Sheila in Hacienda Heights. He may be reached at davidwcrain@aol.com.

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