After earning dual degrees at the Toulouse Aeronautics School and at the National Statistics and Economic Administration School, David started his engineering career working in major industrial groups such as Safran.

David then joined Hay Group, where he held progressively more senior roles during almost 20 years, finally as a member of the global Executive Committee, specialized in three areas: support for management teams, organizational efficiency and change management.

His career was initially focused in France, but he soon moved onto european and then global projects, working primarily with global health groups such as Sanofi, GSK and Pfizer, as well as midcaps such as BioMérieux, P. Fabre and Ceva, with whom he worked in 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2014 - so he already knows the company quite well.