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Public
Speaking
Equal parts educator, facilitator, and instigator, David Phillips equips senior leaders and teams to challenge how they see and think. This enables them to spot hidden risks and opportunities and make better decisions. His keynotes combine sharp insight, disarming honesty, and practical tools that spark meaningful conversations long after the event ends.
Before founding Faster Glass in 2010, David spent six years at Bank of America, where technology, innovation, and Human-Centered Design collided — and occasionally collaborated. Prior to that, he built his career across the U.S. Air Force, public education, and public accounting, worlds that don't usually talk to each other. It's an atypical path, and exactly what makes him effective at helping others connect dots.
Based in Charlotte, David also enjoys being a husband, father, musician, photographer, and mountain biker, even as he is often reminded of his amateur status in all five endeavors.
Popular Topics
David regularly delivers keynotes and workshops for conferences, leadership summits, and large gatherings seeking thoughtful, practical perspectives on growth, change, and innovation. These talks are proven favorites, refined across conferences and organizations.
Unlearning & Rethinking
Why experienced leaders hold on to what's holding them back. And how to break free.
The instincts that got a leader here are not always the ones that get them there. Hard-won experience hardens into assumptions, and assumptions become the lens through which every new situation gets judged — often without the leader noticing the lens is there at all. The result is smart, capable people defending the very habits that have quietly stopped serving them.
This keynote challenges that inheritance head-on. It surfaces the unexamined beliefs and outdated playbooks that masquerade as wisdom, sparks the self-awareness to tell the difference, and gives leaders practical tools for letting go of what no longer fits. The goal isn't to discard hard-won judgment, it's to keep what still works and have the courage to rethink the rest.
Ideal for: Association meetings, executive forums, change management events
Looking vs. Seeing
Spot the non-obvious risks and opportunities hiding in plain sight.
We don't see the world as it is. We see what we're looking for, what we expect, and what our experience has trained us to notice — and we quietly edit out the rest. That's not a flaw in any one leader; it's how perception works. But in a complex organization, the things you don't see are exactly where the danger and the advantage live.
This keynote unpacks the forces that shape what registers and what slips by: the blindness that comes from not knowing to look, the way we frame a challenge before we've understood it, and how expertise itself can narrow the field of view. Leaders leave with a sharper sense of where their own blind spots are likely to be, and a practical discipline for catching what's right in front of them before a competitor, a customer, or a crisis does.
Ideal for: Annual conferences, strategic planning retreats, leadership summits
It's Not the Mice, It's the Maze
Design better environments, get better results.
When behavior disappoints, our instinct is to fix the people: more training, more accountability, more willpower. But people don't act in a vacuum. They respond to the systems, structures, and incentives around them, most of which were designed by someone, sometime, for reasons no one quite remembers. Change the maze, and the mice behave differently.
This keynote shifts the focus from blaming individuals to examining the environments that shape them. It challenges leaders to see the invisible architecture driving the behavior they're frustrated by, and to redesign it deliberately rather than leave it to accident. When the conditions change, better outcomes follow — not because the people got better, but because the maze finally made sense.
Ideal for: Leadership summits, HR/OD forums, culture and change initiatives
Sample of Speaking Engagements
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Ideal Audiences
Senior leaders, people managers, and cross-functional teams navigating change, complexity, and growth
Format Options
Available as engaging keynotes, interactive breakouts, and facilitated workshops, tailored to your audience and context
Audience Feedback
“The speaker was really, really good! He said all the things that my team has been debating and worrying about. Our table had an incredible conversation. It was so good!”
- AvidXchange Tech Summit
“Very engaging! Storytelling was great and made the content real and relatable.”
- CPCC Keynote Presentation
“It was a great experience. One of the best seminars I’ve been to in my business career.”
- PDMA Conference Breakout