Marketing leader turned FIGMENT founder. David speaks on staying creative, human, and curious in the age of AI.
David is currently Director of Marketing at DeSimone Consulting Engineering, following senior marketing leadership roles at Gensler, Perkins Eastman, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, some of the most recognized names in architecture and design. In 2007, he founded FIGMENT, a free participatory arts festival built on the premise that everyone is an artist. It has since grown to dozens of events across twenty cities on four continents.
He is the author of The Architect's Essentials of Marketing (Wiley), endorsed by the American Institute of Architects, and holds degrees in dramatic writing from NYU and Irish theatre from Trinity College Dublin. That combination, boardroom discipline, and festival-ground instinct, is the spine of every talk he gives.
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His insight comes from running an actual grassroots arts movement for eighteen years, not from studying one from the outside.
Two decades inside the rooms where Gensler, Perkins Eastman, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro shape the conversations behind architecture, cities, public space, and the built environment, not just brand strategy.
Theatre, writing, architecture, marketing, and community-building brought together into a single, coherent point of view on creativity.
Every keynote is shaped around your audience's actual questions and industry, not delivered from a fixed, generic deck.
David still runs FIGMENT today, and he's still a working marketing leader. Both worlds are happening at once today, in the world of the algorithm and AI.
In development. David is refining the language for this framework; the principles below are drawn directly from his own words and will sharpen as the framework is finalized.
Every organization innovates through people, not processes.
Institutions don't create ideas, individuals do. Lasting innovation begins when people are empowered to think independently, challenge assumptions, and contribute their unique perspective.
The best ideas begin with better questions.
Curiosity is the engine of creativity. In a world where AI can generate answers instantly, the real advantage comes from asking the right questions, the ones others haven't thought to ask yet.
Creativity grows where people feel safe to express themselves.
Innovation depends on trust. When people can challenge ideas, experiment freely, and speak openly without fear, better thinking and better outcomes follow. Leaders create and hold the space where innovation happens.
Progress requires the courage to question convention.
The most creative organizations don't reward conformity, they encourage thoughtful dissent. New possibilities emerge when people are willing to rethink what others accept as non-negotiable.
The best work is driven by purpose, not just reward.
Recognition and success matter, but creativity thrives when authentic interest stays at the center. The challenge begins when the possibility of external rewards replaces the reason you wanted to create in the first place.
Corporate offsites, industry associations, client-appreciation events, leadership summits: David tailors every talk to the room. Tell us about yours.
Start the ConversationTheatre taught David how an audience decides to believe something. Architecture taught him how an idea survives contact with a client, a budget, and a deadline. Everything he speaks about lives in the overlap.
David moved to New York at eighteen to study film at NYU, and found dramatic writing instead, a smaller program, he was told, where he'd find his footing first. He did: two of his plays are still published and performed today through the Dramatic Publishing Company. He later earned an M.Phil. in Irish Theatre from Trinity College Dublin.
Along the way came Burning Man, and then, in 2007, FIGMENT, a free, participatory arts festival David founded on Governors Island on the idea that everyone is an artist, and that art shouldn't need a price tag to be worth making. He thinks of FIGMENT as a conceptual art project as much as a festival: the work isn't a physical object on display, it's the participation itself. FIGMENT has since grown into dozens of events across twenty cities and five countries, drawing hundreds of thousands of participants and earning a "Best Art Festival in NYC" nod from The Village Voice.
"If FIGMENT were a country, it would be the happiest in the world, and I would apply for citizenship immediately." BBC Travel
His first job out of college, fittingly, was with an architecture firm that hired him specifically because of his theatre background: they wanted someone who understood how to hold a room. He's been translating between the creative and technical worlds ever since, working across design firms including Gensler, Perkins Eastman, WSP, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and DeSimone.
David is candid about the one form of creativity he still avoids: drawing. When he was about ten years old, a discouraging art teacher left a mark that never fully faded. He hasn't picked up a pencil to draw since, and he'll admit, without much hesitation, that it's still something close to a fear rather than a simple preference.
What's stayed with him instead is the belief that creativity found a way around the fear rather than through it. Shut out of drawing, he built a career out of every other form of expression he could reach: writing, theatre, film, festivals, and eventually brand strategy. He's said more than once that he knows he should go back and finally learn to draw and paint, the way he tells audiences to lean into the parts of creativity that feel unsafe. He just hasn't done it yet.
It's a small story, but it's the honest version of his larger argument: that creativity rarely survives criticism delivered the wrong way at the wrong age, and that the work of building a creative practice as an adult is often the work of rebuilding a safe space that was taken away early.
Getting in touch with our creativity is the secret to where we go next: as people, as businesses, and as a society.
Great ideas gain momentum through storytelling and recognition. David doesn't reject that, he just thinks the idea has to be good, and authentically presented, before a name attached to it means anything at all.
Real creativity requires a space where people feel safe enough to bring themselves to it fully. Everything FIGMENT does, and everything David's talks aim for, starts there.
Marketing, done well, is theatre: building the environment that leads someone honestly toward a decision, not tricking them into one.
David is clear that the future isn't people competing with AI. It's people working alongside it: using AI to sharpen creativity, judgment, and decision-making rather than hand those things over. AI can execute a task fast. It can't decide what's worth saying, the way a person can, based on everything they've ever experienced. That's the distinction David thinks the next decade of work will actually turn on.
David has led marketing, branding, communications, and business development for some of the most respected names in architecture and engineering.
The Architect's Essentials of Marketing (John Wiley & Sons), endorsed by the American Institute of Architects.
Named to Building Design+Construction's "40 Under 40," 2008.
Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS); past president, SMPS New York City chapter.
BFA, Dramatic Writing, NYU. M.Phil., Irish Theatre, Trinity College Dublin.
DeSimone Consulting Engineering, structural engineering, façade, vertical transportation, and other services, working on landmark projects around the world.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, securing new work in arts, culture, public space, and education globally.
Morris Adjmi Architects.
Marketing, communications, and business development leadership across two decades in the design and engineering industry.
Keynotes, workshops, and the outcomes past audiences have walked away with.
View Speaking TopicsEvery engagement starts with the same question: what does creativity mean for this specific audience, right now? From there, David builds toward a clear shift in how the room can see its own work.
Every talk below started as a question David has spent two decades answering in the field, not a slide deck built for a stage. Each can run as a standalone keynote or be adapted into a longer workshop format. Tap a card to read the full description.
For teams that want to leave with more than an idea: shorter, more interactive formats built around a single working exercise.
A working session on making space inside an organization for ideas to be tried out loud, drawn directly from what makes FIGMENT work at festival scale.
For managers balancing execution against creative freedom, practical structures for protecting the work that doesn't fit neatly into a sprint.
A brand-storytelling exercise for leadership teams and founders, adapted from David's work positioning firms inside crowded, expertise-driven markets.
A shift in how members think about creativity's role in their day-to-day work, and a set of associations and speaking credits they can point to when framing their own value.
A reframe of creativity as a source of meaning, community, and longevity in the next chapter, not a hobby squeezed into whatever time is left over.
A clearer read on where creativity and innovation actually fit inside an organization built for efficiency, and what it takes to make room for both.
David speaks on creativity, marketing and storytelling, leadership in creative organizations, the impact of AI on creative work, and community building through participatory arts.
Keynotes typically run 30 to 45 minutes. Workshops run 60 to 90 minutes, and fireside chats or panels run 20 to 40 minutes. Custom multi-session engagements are also available.
Yes. David is available for in-person, virtual, and hybrid speaking engagements worldwide.
Every keynote is tailored to the audience, whether that is an industry association, a corporate leadership team, or a client-appreciation event. See the Bespoke Session option on the home page for a fully custom engagement.
Most events are booked six to twelve weeks ahead, though David's team will always check availability for shorter timelines.
David Koren is a keynote speaker on creativity, marketing, and human-centered leadership based in New York. He is a strong fit for association keynote speaker bookings, corporate innovation events, client-appreciation programs, and any audience thinking seriously about creativity in the age of AI. Drawing on two decades leading marketing and brand strategy for firms including Gensler, Perkins Eastman, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and DeSimone, alongside founding the participatory arts festival FIGMENT, David brings a rare combination of boardroom credibility and hands-on creative practice to every stage.
Share your audience, date, and format, and David will follow up with availability and a tailored outline.
Book David to SpeakWriting has always been David's way of putting his creativity into the world. Over the years that's added up to four books, spanning two plays, a marketing guide, and a memoir, and a fifth is currently underway, soon to join the collection.
A personal, photo-filled look back at ten years of building FIGMENT, the participatory arts festival David founded on Governors Island. Edited and photo edited by Carlijn Urlings, it is less a history than an argument: for creativity, participation, and making room for people to create something together.
View on Amazon
A practical, field-tested guide to marketing strategy and business development for architecture, landscape architecture, and design firms, written while David was marketing director at Gensler's New York office. Endorsed by the American Institute of Architects and still cited as a standard reference in the field two decades later.
View on Amazon
A family-friendly one-act adventure in which a warring king and his sons are forced to reckon with the cost of endless conflict when the moon itself begins to fall from the sky. Still published and performed through the Dramatic Publishing Company.
A comic, contemporary retelling of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, following the bell ringer Quazimodo's devotion to Esmeralda and the small society of gargoyles who share his tower. One of David's earliest published plays, still licensed for performance today.
View at Dramatic PublishingThemes from all four books, creativity, storytelling, marketing, and participation, show up across his keynotes and workshops.
View Speaking TopicsThe fastest way to reach David is directly. Send an email, give him a call, or connect on LinkedIn, he or his team typically responds within two business days.
A quick overview of how organizations typically bring David in. Every engagement is scoped to the event once you're in touch, this is just a starting reference.
Creativity requires a space where people feel safe enough to bring themselves to it fully and authentically. And the role of the creative leader is to create that space and hold it open for others to inhabit.
Reach out directly and David or his team will follow up within two business days.
david@koren.us