David brings more than 40 years of executive leadership in technology, financial services, and strategy. At Hewlett-Packard, he led the Transformation Program Office for a $1 billion-plus, CEO-sponsored turnaround, drove business strategy for a 50,000-person global services organization spanning 14 countries, and led HP’s $500 million Microsoft Consulting Services organization of more than 4,000 professionals. Before that he helped shape Compaq’s rise in the 1990s — launching the company’s first fee-based professional services organization — and built industry alliances at EDS with Intel, Microsoft, and Oracle. He started his career developing fixed-income trading platforms that earned national recognition from the Wall Street Journal, and he’s since served as COO of a generative AI company supporting the defense and intelligence communities, with advisory roles at Rice University and Texas A&M. Today he’s Founder and Managing Partner of Knowtional, a Dallas-based business and technology strategy consultancy.

But for David, service isn’t an abstraction. It’s his family’s story. His father, Billy B. Swatzell, flew helicopters with the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam. And his wife Beverly’s father, Hector A. Rochin, served with Merrill’s Marauders — the legendary WWII unit that fought through the jungles of Burma and whose lineage lives on today in the 75th Ranger Regiment.

A 1st Cav pilot on one side of the family. A Marauder on the other. The heritage this Memorial exists to honor runs right through the Swatzell home — and now David is bringing four decades of world-class strategy experience to help us protect it for the next generation.