David Grebow

Hello Reader,

I reinvented myself when the Pandemic turned one, and I turned 74. After spending more than 20 years as a speaker, workshop leader, consultant, and occasional writer, I decided it was past time to turn full-time. I initially published nonfiction and am currently on the third revision of my first novel, Comfort Thomas.

Comfort Thomas

Comfort Thomas has undergone two major revisions, and I'm well into the third. CF1 was about the place my hippie self landed after dropping out. CF2 was about the people with whom I communed and an A-list of '70s characters who never really visited the farm but were ever present in spirit. CF3—the final draft—is about the time—-1970s—when everyone in post-war America started changing in ways that are still being felt today.

I reside with my Best Friend and Spouse, Susan, in North Carolina next to a lake, in the piney woods filled with invisible birds and their joyful songs. When not sleeping, I write or take a break to become a better reader, photographer, painter, chef, and chess player.

More Background

As a ghostwriter, I completed two books. Once Upon a Time (KnowledgeStar, 2024), a biography of Howard Berens, the Psychiatrist who was instrumental in bringing Humanistic Psychology to the United States and moving therapy towards being more holistic and patient-centered and less Freudian and psychoanalytical.

I also wrote The Road to Mori: Smart Villages of Tomorrow (Peaceful Evolution Press, 2018), the cornerstone work for the international Smart Village Movement led by Solomon Darwin, Dean of the School of Innovation at the Haas School of Business, University of California. The book shows how 3 billion people living in rural villages around the world can find the doors to the 21st century without leaving their homes.

Minds at Work: Managing for Success in the Knowledge Economy (ATD Press, 2019) is the bestselling management book I wrote with my co-author Stephen J. Gill. My work as a futurist at IBM gave me the foresight to see where technology and its impact on us was headed. I saw we were inexorably moving into a virtual AI-driven world of working and living before the 2020 pandemic. This book has guided people around the world living and working in the "new normal."

Before that I was fortunate enough to also be a contributing writer for Creating a Learning Culture with Marcia Conner and James Clawson. I also served on the editorial review board for 4 Information Age Publishing books on technology and learning - “Education Managers with Tomorrow’s Technology,” “Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Technology, and Practice,” “Educating Managers Through Real World Projects,” “University and Corporate Innovations in Lifelong Learning”. I wrote "A Compass for the Knowledge Economy," published in 2010, and have written numerous research papers and articles on the future impact of technology.

Deeper Background

I was born in Manhattan, New York City. I attended Harvard University and took a year off to work with the American Friends Service Committee, counseling Conscientious Objectors to the Vietnam War. Upon graduation, I lived and worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a documentary film producer and director. Before tuning in and dropping out for a year to live on the Comfort Thomas communal farm on Mount Desert Island in Maine, I ran Cambridge Ecology Action, managed the first city-wide tests of recycling in Somerville and Marblehead for the EPA, and organized the first Urban Gardening Conference and Fair as Director of The Christian Herter Environmental Center.

I started my corporate life with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and was one of the first people on the planet to use DECmail, one of the earliest incarnations of email. I left DEC and joined IBM, where I held consulting and senior executive roles with a focus on the positive impact of technology on people's lives. I directed the Institute for Advanced Learning in Zurich and worked on the initial efforts to develop Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS).

After leaving IBM in 2006, I became the Founder and CEO of KnowledgeStar, a company that consults with Fortune 500 corporations, startups, NGOs, and leading analyst firms Bersin & Associates and the Brandon Hall Group. I was doing a lot of research and writing but had not yet pinned the title "Writer" on me.

This is where the command RETURN TO TOP comes in ...

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