David R. Curry
David R. Curry is Managing Principal of davidrcurryAssociates, an intellectual services firm
serving clients in the non-profit, academic, government and commercial sectors. Practice
areas include governance, strategic philanthropy, market positioning and brand
engineering, issues management and policy development, innovation, operational
excellence and leadership development.
David has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of
Pennsylvania since 2005. He currently is Executive Director of the Center for Vaccine
Ethics and Policy, a joint program of the Penn Center for Bioethics, The Wistar Institute,
and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Prior to forming davidrcurryAssociates, David served as Vice President, Corporate Public
Affairs for Unisys Corporation, the global, $6 billion information technology services
firm. He was a member of the senior management team for over two decades, during
which he led the company’s public affairs function. In this role he led issues management
activities; corporate brand, market positioning and identity programs; executive,
customer, and employee communications; the company's network of corporate and
research libraries and historical archives; civic development and community relations;
philanthropic and sponsorship programs; sales and marketing development programs,
and a range of special corporate initiatives. He directly supported special requirements for
the Office of The Chairman during four successive Unisys CEOs from 1983 to 2002.
David enjoys a strong record of leadership and governance service with non-profit
organizations in the sciences, arts and education sectors. He serves on the board of the
International Literacy Institute/National Center for Adult Literacy of the University of
Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy.
He recently completed nine years of service on the board of the Franklin Institute Science
Museum (Philadelphia). He served as a member of the Executive Committee of The
Philadelphia Liberty Medal, and has served on the Boards of the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra (Detroit) and Arts Midwest, the seven-state, regional arts service organization
involved in a range of arts programming and granting management of National
Endowment for the Arts funds.
He served as president of the Board of The Arts Foundation of Michigan, as vice president
of the Board of the Friends of Detroit Public Library, and as chairman of the Michigan
Center for the Book (Library of Congress), among others. He is President Emeritus and
served on the Board of Governors of the Germantown Cricket Club (Philadelphia, 1854),
one of the oldest and most diverse private athletic and social clubs in the nation. He has
been honored by a range of organizations for his governance and leadership service.
David earned a B.A. in Philosophy with High Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa from the
Honors Program at Wayne University in Detroit, Michigan. He also hold an MS in
Information and Library Science from Wayne.
* * * *
The discussion below highlights work organized by broad sector of activity, some of
which is alluded to above:
In the brand strategy and market positioning space, David was instrumental in
helping Burroughs and then Unisys move through successive marketing positioning,
brand identity and strategic planning cycles, including the integration of a number of
acquisitions. This work was accomplished as the traditional mainframe industry
transformed almost continuously through the 1980s and 1990s. As Managing Principal of
davidrcurryAssociates, he applies that brand management and strategic positioning
expertise to client situations across the commercial and nonprofit sector. This work
includes market positioning, vision/mission articulation, visual identity and naming
programs, and image/reputation-building programs to support new brand directions.
In the thought leadership arena, David has specialized in framing complex ideas
involving policy, technology innovation and organizational performance for global
audiences. As executive editor and publisher of key Unisys publications targeted to
customers for two decades, he targeted senior decision makers in commercial and non-
profit organizations in establishing the company as a thought leader and strengthening
brand equity as a result. He was chief speech writer and responsible for all writers at the
company during a decade-long period, providing the catalyst and oversight to all
speeches, op-eds, policy stances, congressional testimony and related rhetoric across the
company’s global operations.
One excellent example is his role in working with the Mayor Shanghai’s annual convening
of business and policy leaders from across the globe to engage strategy around themes
ranging from digital technology to economic development. David authored several
presentations made at these meetings and worked closely with Shanghai government staff
in orchestrating the overall program.
In the civic advancement arena, David has worked in support of a number of
organizations across the U.S., organizing financial, sponsorship and leadership resources
from Burroughs and then Unisys Corporation during his tenure with those organizations.
He represented the company on the Board of Detroit Renaissance before relocating to
Philadelphia in the early 1990s.
His work with Greater Philadelphia First (GPF) included sponsorship and hands-on
planning of Philadelphia exhibition at the World Congress of Historical Cities in Kyoto in
1994 in conjunction with GPF’s Greater Philadelphia International Network (GPIN). This
project involved leveraging Unisys relationships with the Smithsonian to allow major
artifacts from the ENIAC to be loaned and integrated into the city’s exhibition, themed
“Philadelphia: Birthplace of Liberty…Birthplace of Computing.”
He guided the sponsorship and provided strong hands-on planning and in-kind support
for GPF’s Philadelphia Liberty Medal program beginning in 1993, when the Medal events
helped open the Convention Center with President Clinton awarding the prize to F.W. de
Klerk and Nelson Mandella. He also served on the Executive Committee of the Liberty
Medal and assisted in its transition to the The Philadelphia Foundation, and then to the
National Constitution Center.
.
David guided the sponsorship decision by Unisys to become one of the six founding
sponsors of the Avenue of the Arts initiative, which helped begin the transformation of
South Broad Street and provided the foundation for the Kimmel Center project.
He provided consulting and pro bono support for the CEO Council for Growth/ Select
Greater Philadelphia “State of the Region” event in December 2004. This event
orchestrated the involvement of the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware,
and launched a new era of collaboration for economic development for the Greater
Philadelphia region. David provided strategy counsel and editorial/creative services,
supporting a team which developed content ranging from governor’s briefing books to
informational videos and to event speeches.
In the philanthropic arena, David was responsible for the Burroughs Corporation
contributions program and thereafter the Unisys contributions, volunteerism and
community relations programs over a 20-year period beginning in the early 1980s.
As part of the Burroughs-Sperry merger in 1986 to form Unisys Corporation − then one
of the largest industrial mergers in business history − he led the integration of the
respective company giving programs. He blended the highly-decentralized Sperry
Foundation and Sperry operating division giving programs, and the centralized Burroughs
Corporation contributions program, dissolving the Sperry Foundation, and creating a
leaner, focused program serving the new Unisys.
In the early 1990s, with Unisys facing significant financial challenges and at the Board’s
direction, David led the dismantling of the Unisys giving program, disengaging from over
400 major support relationships with non-profits in the U.S. and internationally over a six
month period, striving to minimize reputational and relationship damage.
Upon the company’s return to profitability in the mid-1990s, he successfully argued for
Board action to resume a giving program, and explored early “high engagement”
philanthropy as Unisys focused on a single giving sector: science, tech and math literacy
and excellence.
The Unisys giving focus quickly evolved to support the special role of science museums in
informal science education. David was “at-the-table” in forming strategy and executing
programming that led the building of the first “Corporate Partnership” between a sponsor
and the Franklin Institute Science Museum. The Partnership focused Unisys challenge,
collaboration and general operating grants of over $5 million over a five-year period, and
helped leverage some $10M in further grants from government, corporate and foundation
donors. The partnership model has been the template for other corporate partnerships
undertaken by the Franklin since. [see further discussion regarding work in this work in
the “museums/exhibits/archival space below]
As noted above, he has served on and has led a number of non-profit boards including
current service on the boards of the Franklin Institute Science Museum (Philadelphia), the
National Center for Adult Literacy/International Literacy Institute of the University of
Pennsylvania.
He is currently providing strategy consulting services to foundations and nonprofits, with
a particular focus on strategic alternatives including mergers & acquisitions, PPPs (Public
Private Partnerships) and innovative financing strategies.
In the museums/exhibits/archival space, David Curry’s work has ranged widely. He
led the team in creating the Burroughs Corporation Archives in preparation for the
company’s centennial celebration in 1984, which he led as organizing chair. This collection
of documents, glass slides, photographic and film materials, objects and technology
artifacts was eventually donated to the Charles Babbage Institute for the History of
Information Processing at the University of Minnesota in the 1990s. In 1997, David was
recognized by the Board of the Babbage Institute for his “extraordinary contributions” in
creating one of premier archival resources on the history of the computing industry.
David worked with the Smithsonian on two major exhibitions relating to computing
during the 1990s. The first was with the National Museum of American History’s
“Information Age” exhibit program, which spanned the development and societal impact
of computing and communications from the 1850s on. He provided strategy and
conceptual counsel to the project, and facilitated archival research and other support. He
also worked with the Air & Space Museum on its major “Computing in Flight” exhibit and
subsequent exhibits that have explored the role of computing technology is flight and in
space exploration.
He led formation and helped manage the collaboration among Unisys, the University of
Pennsylvania and the Greater Philadelphia First Foundation as the organizing institutions
for the 50th anniversary of ENIAC in 1996. This effort involved a number of regional and
national organizations from the civic, academic and commercial spheres, and culminated
with Vice President Al Gore dedicating a permanent exhibit on Penn’s campus. David was
a co-leader of the organizing committee and provided leadership to collaboration efforts
involving the Smithsonian and many other institutions which touched the development of
the ENIAC and early computing history. He also provided conceptual counsel on the
design of the permanent exhibit.
He was instrumental in forging a collaboration among twelve science museums in the
U.S. and internationally to create the Science Learning Network. This NSF-funded project
explored the meeting point between museum expertise in conceiving and building
interactive physical exhibits, and the emerging interactive space on the web. The principal
science museums or museum organizations in the U.S. included the Franklin Institute,
Exploratorium/San Francisco, and the science museums of Miami, Boston, Portland,
Oregon and Minneapolis. Internationally, the collaborators included Singapore, Japan,
London, Helsinki, Paris, Mexico, Venezuela and others. The project was honored by
UNESCO which awarded its Diderot Prize to the Science Learning Network for outstanding
contributions to the public understanding of science.
His work on special historical celebrations included the Burroughs Centennial and ENIAC
50th as above, as well as the 25th anniversary of the Arts Foundation of Michigan, the
50th anniversary of the Friends of the Detroit Public Library, and the 150th anniversary of
the Germantown Cricket Club. He led and conducted archival research, provided strategy
and conceptual counsel, planning, program design and execution for these celebrations.
During his Unisys tenure, David also led the multinational team responsible for
commercial exhibits, trade shows and special events globally. These programs integrated
the company’s advanced computing technology in live environments at major trade shows
on all continents.
David also managed the company’s sports marketing programs, where the company
pursued a barter strategy, and led the innovation of distributed computing environments
and live web scoring and statistics for major sports events globally in return for major
sponsor status. These events included the British Open, U.S. Open, the PGA
Championship and many other major golf events, the U.S. Open tennis championships,
the Commonwealth Games and many others.
In the awards space, David Curry’s work in philanthropy and sponsorship resulted in his
direct support and involvement with a wide range of awards, including design of Unisys
Corporation’s “Pinnacle of Excellence Awards,” which annually recognized extraordinary
achievement across a range of corporate disciplines. He actively represented the
Corporation in its sponsorship of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Grace Murray
Hopper Award, recognizing pioneering achievement in the field of computing by a person
under 30 years of age. He was strongly involved in all aspects of the Philadelphia Liberty
Medal program through the 1990s, and more recently has provided pro bono strategy and
program design support to the Medal as a member of its Executive Committee. His service
on the Board of Trustees of the Franklin Institute Science Museum (noted above) includes
committee service on its Science and Awards Committee, supporting one of the oldest
awards programs in the sciences (1824).
* * * *
David R. Curry is Managing Principal of davidrcurryAssociates, an intellectual services firm
serving clients in the non-profit, academic, government and commercial sectors. Practice
areas include governance, strategic philanthropy, market positioning and brand
engineering, issues management and policy development, innovation, operational
excellence and leadership development.
David has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of
Pennsylvania since 2005. He currently is Executive Director of the Center for Vaccine
Ethics and Policy, a joint program of the Penn Center for Bioethics, The Wistar Institute,
and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Prior to forming davidrcurryAssociates, David served as Vice President, Corporate Public
Affairs for Unisys Corporation, the global, $6 billion information technology services
firm. He was a member of the senior management team for over two decades, during
which he led the company’s public affairs function. In this role he led issues management
activities; corporate brand, market positioning and identity programs; executive,
customer, and employee communications; the company's network of corporate and
research libraries and historical archives; civic development and community relations;
philanthropic and sponsorship programs; sales and marketing development programs,
and a range of special corporate initiatives. He directly supported special requirements for
the Office of The Chairman during four successive Unisys CEOs from 1983 to 2002.
David enjoys a strong record of leadership and governance service with non-profit
organizations in the sciences, arts and education sectors. He serves on the board of the
International Literacy Institute/National Center for Adult Literacy of the University of
Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy.
He recently completed nine years of service on the board of the Franklin Institute Science
Museum (Philadelphia). He served as a member of the Executive Committee of The
Philadelphia Liberty Medal, and has served on the Boards of the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra (Detroit) and Arts Midwest, the seven-state, regional arts service organization
involved in a range of arts programming and granting management of National
Endowment for the Arts funds.
He served as president of the Board of The Arts Foundation of Michigan, as vice president
of the Board of the Friends of Detroit Public Library, and as chairman of the Michigan
Center for the Book (Library of Congress), among others. He is President Emeritus and
served on the Board of Governors of the Germantown Cricket Club (Philadelphia, 1854),
one of the oldest and most diverse private athletic and social clubs in the nation. He has
been honored by a range of organizations for his governance and leadership service.
David earned a B.A. in Philosophy with High Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa from the
Honors Program at Wayne University in Detroit, Michigan. He also hold an MS in
Information and Library Science from Wayne.
* * * *
The discussion below highlights work organized by broad sector of activity, some of
which is alluded to above:
In the brand strategy and market positioning space, David was instrumental in
helping Burroughs and then Unisys move through successive marketing positioning,
brand identity and strategic planning cycles, including the integration of a number of
acquisitions. This work was accomplished as the traditional mainframe industry
transformed almost continuously through the 1980s and 1990s. As Managing Principal of
davidrcurryAssociates, he applies that brand management and strategic positioning
expertise to client situations across the commercial and nonprofit sector. This work
includes market positioning, vision/mission articulation, visual identity and naming
programs, and image/reputation-building programs to support new brand directions.
In the thought leadership arena, David has specialized in framing complex ideas
involving policy, technology innovation and organizational performance for global
audiences. As executive editor and publisher of key Unisys publications targeted to
customers for two decades, he targeted senior decision makers in commercial and non-
profit organizations in establishing the company as a thought leader and strengthening
brand equity as a result. He was chief speech writer and responsible for all writers at the
company during a decade-long period, providing the catalyst and oversight to all
speeches, op-eds, policy stances, congressional testimony and related rhetoric across the
company’s global operations.
One excellent example is his role in working with the Mayor Shanghai’s annual convening
of business and policy leaders from across the globe to engage strategy around themes
ranging from digital technology to economic development. David authored several
presentations made at these meetings and worked closely with Shanghai government staff
in orchestrating the overall program.
In the civic advancement arena, David has worked in support of a number of
organizations across the U.S., organizing financial, sponsorship and leadership resources
from Burroughs and then Unisys Corporation during his tenure with those organizations.
He represented the company on the Board of Detroit Renaissance before relocating to
Philadelphia in the early 1990s.
His work with Greater Philadelphia First (GPF) included sponsorship and hands-on
planning of Philadelphia exhibition at the World Congress of Historical Cities in Kyoto in
1994 in conjunction with GPF’s Greater Philadelphia International Network (GPIN). This
project involved leveraging Unisys relationships with the Smithsonian to allow major
artifacts from the ENIAC to be loaned and integrated into the city’s exhibition, themed
“Philadelphia: Birthplace of Liberty…Birthplace of Computing.”
He guided the sponsorship and provided strong hands-on planning and in-kind support
for GPF’s Philadelphia Liberty Medal program beginning in 1993, when the Medal events
helped open the Convention Center with President Clinton awarding the prize to F.W. de
Klerk and Nelson Mandella. He also served on the Executive Committee of the Liberty
Medal and assisted in its transition to the The Philadelphia Foundation, and then to the
National Constitution Center.
.
David guided the sponsorship decision by Unisys to become one of the six founding
sponsors of the Avenue of the Arts initiative, which helped begin the transformation of
South Broad Street and provided the foundation for the Kimmel Center project.
He provided consulting and pro bono support for the CEO Council for Growth/ Select
Greater Philadelphia “State of the Region” event in December 2004. This event
orchestrated the involvement of the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware,
and launched a new era of collaboration for economic development for the Greater
Philadelphia region. David provided strategy counsel and editorial/creative services,
supporting a team which developed content ranging from governor’s briefing books to
informational videos and to event speeches.
In the philanthropic arena, David was responsible for the Burroughs Corporation
contributions program and thereafter the Unisys contributions, volunteerism and
community relations programs over a 20-year period beginning in the early 1980s.
As part of the Burroughs-Sperry merger in 1986 to form Unisys Corporation − then one
of the largest industrial mergers in business history − he led the integration of the
respective company giving programs. He blended the highly-decentralized Sperry
Foundation and Sperry operating division giving programs, and the centralized Burroughs
Corporation contributions program, dissolving the Sperry Foundation, and creating a
leaner, focused program serving the new Unisys.
In the early 1990s, with Unisys facing significant financial challenges and at the Board’s
direction, David led the dismantling of the Unisys giving program, disengaging from over
400 major support relationships with non-profits in the U.S. and internationally over a six
month period, striving to minimize reputational and relationship damage.
Upon the company’s return to profitability in the mid-1990s, he successfully argued for
Board action to resume a giving program, and explored early “high engagement”
philanthropy as Unisys focused on a single giving sector: science, tech and math literacy
and excellence.
The Unisys giving focus quickly evolved to support the special role of science museums in
informal science education. David was “at-the-table” in forming strategy and executing
programming that led the building of the first “Corporate Partnership” between a sponsor
and the Franklin Institute Science Museum. The Partnership focused Unisys challenge,
collaboration and general operating grants of over $5 million over a five-year period, and
helped leverage some $10M in further grants from government, corporate and foundation
donors. The partnership model has been the template for other corporate partnerships
undertaken by the Franklin since. [see further discussion regarding work in this work in
the “museums/exhibits/archival space below]
As noted above, he has served on and has led a number of non-profit boards including
current service on the boards of the Franklin Institute Science Museum (Philadelphia), the
National Center for Adult Literacy/International Literacy Institute of the University of
Pennsylvania.
He is currently providing strategy consulting services to foundations and nonprofits, with
a particular focus on strategic alternatives including mergers & acquisitions, PPPs (Public
Private Partnerships) and innovative financing strategies.
In the museums/exhibits/archival space, David Curry’s work has ranged widely. He
led the team in creating the Burroughs Corporation Archives in preparation for the
company’s centennial celebration in 1984, which he led as organizing chair. This collection
of documents, glass slides, photographic and film materials, objects and technology
artifacts was eventually donated to the Charles Babbage Institute for the History of
Information Processing at the University of Minnesota in the 1990s. In 1997, David was
recognized by the Board of the Babbage Institute for his “extraordinary contributions” in
creating one of premier archival resources on the history of the computing industry.
David worked with the Smithsonian on two major exhibitions relating to computing
during the 1990s. The first was with the National Museum of American History’s
“Information Age” exhibit program, which spanned the development and societal impact
of computing and communications from the 1850s on. He provided strategy and
conceptual counsel to the project, and facilitated archival research and other support. He
also worked with the Air & Space Museum on its major “Computing in Flight” exhibit and
subsequent exhibits that have explored the role of computing technology is flight and in
space exploration.
He led formation and helped manage the collaboration among Unisys, the University of
Pennsylvania and the Greater Philadelphia First Foundation as the organizing institutions
for the 50th anniversary of ENIAC in 1996. This effort involved a number of regional and
national organizations from the civic, academic and commercial spheres, and culminated
with Vice President Al Gore dedicating a permanent exhibit on Penn’s campus. David was
a co-leader of the organizing committee and provided leadership to collaboration efforts
involving the Smithsonian and many other institutions which touched the development of
the ENIAC and early computing history. He also provided conceptual counsel on the
design of the permanent exhibit.
He was instrumental in forging a collaboration among twelve science museums in the
U.S. and internationally to create the Science Learning Network. This NSF-funded project
explored the meeting point between museum expertise in conceiving and building
interactive physical exhibits, and the emerging interactive space on the web. The principal
science museums or museum organizations in the U.S. included the Franklin Institute,
Exploratorium/San Francisco, and the science museums of Miami, Boston, Portland,
Oregon and Minneapolis. Internationally, the collaborators included Singapore, Japan,
London, Helsinki, Paris, Mexico, Venezuela and others. The project was honored by
UNESCO which awarded its Diderot Prize to the Science Learning Network for outstanding
contributions to the public understanding of science.
His work on special historical celebrations included the Burroughs Centennial and ENIAC
50th as above, as well as the 25th anniversary of the Arts Foundation of Michigan, the
50th anniversary of the Friends of the Detroit Public Library, and the 150th anniversary of
the Germantown Cricket Club. He led and conducted archival research, provided strategy
and conceptual counsel, planning, program design and execution for these celebrations.
During his Unisys tenure, David also led the multinational team responsible for
commercial exhibits, trade shows and special events globally. These programs integrated
the company’s advanced computing technology in live environments at major trade shows
on all continents.
David also managed the company’s sports marketing programs, where the company
pursued a barter strategy, and led the innovation of distributed computing environments
and live web scoring and statistics for major sports events globally in return for major
sponsor status. These events included the British Open, U.S. Open, the PGA
Championship and many other major golf events, the U.S. Open tennis championships,
the Commonwealth Games and many others.
In the awards space, David Curry’s work in philanthropy and sponsorship resulted in his
direct support and involvement with a wide range of awards, including design of Unisys
Corporation’s “Pinnacle of Excellence Awards,” which annually recognized extraordinary
achievement across a range of corporate disciplines. He actively represented the
Corporation in its sponsorship of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Grace Murray
Hopper Award, recognizing pioneering achievement in the field of computing by a person
under 30 years of age. He was strongly involved in all aspects of the Philadelphia Liberty
Medal program through the 1990s, and more recently has provided pro bono strategy and
program design support to the Medal as a member of its Executive Committee. His service
on the Board of Trustees of the Franklin Institute Science Museum (noted above) includes
committee service on its Science and Awards Committee, supporting one of the oldest
awards programs in the sciences (1824).
* * * *
| davidrcurryAssociates intellectual precision...supple imagination |
| _______________________________________________________ |
