David Friedman officially retired from Forell|Elsesser Engineers Inc. at the end of 2020, after 40+ years where he was past President, CEO, and Chair of the Board. F|E is an award-winning structural and earthquake engineering firm headquartered in San Francisco. As Engineer-of-Record and Principal-in-Charge of over 400 seismic retrofits and construction projects, his work included the base isolation retrofits for San Francisco City Hall and the Asian Art Museum, the adaptive reuse and retrofit for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the highly innovative seismic safety corrections and remodel of the UC Berkeley California Memorial Stadium, which sits atop the active Hayward Earthquake Fault.

In addition, David is the immediate Past President of the Board of Directors of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), which disseminates lessons learned from earthquakes, and for which he participated in post-earthquake reconnaissance teams in Kobe, Japan and Wenchuan, China. He has also served as Chair of the Board of the San Francisco Foundation (SFF), San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR), and Jewish Home & Senior Living Foundation of San Francisco (JH&SLF). David also served on the Board of Directors of the University of California, Berkeley Foundation (UCBF),and most recently Build Change, a nonprofit working globally to save lives in earthquakes and typhoons.

A licensed Structural Engineer in California, Nevada, and British Columbia, he has a B.S. in Civil Engineering from University of California, Berkeley.