David Dechman
David Dechman is the Chief Executive Officer And Co-founder of Summit Rock Advisors. Summit Rock provides sophisticated and unbiased financial advice and portfolio management to a limited number of families and charitable foundations with investable wealth in excess of $100 million. The team is based in New York City, and the firm's name refers to the highest point in Central Park.
Prior to Summit Rock, David was with The Goldman Sachs Group for 16 years, most recently as Partner and co-head of Private Wealth Management for the Americas. At the time of his departure, the business earned revenue of more than $1 billion, managing roughly $200 billion of client assets. David led and managed roughly 300 investment professionals (plus associated support staff) across 10 regional offices.
David joined Goldman Sachs in 1987. The first 10 years of his career were spent in Boston, directly managing assets for wealthy families, primarily entrepreneurs who were selling a business or some other asset for cash or STOCK. David built a team which oversaw roughly $7 billion in assets for perhaps 100 families, and which was the largest of roughly 100 similar teams across Goldman Sachs worldwide.
David was elected as a Managing Director in 1997 and as a Partner in 1998. David was the first person in the history of Goldman Sachs to promoted to each position while still directly servicing clients.
Non-Profit Organizations
Dechman is a trustee of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. He has been a trustee there since 1995, and has continuously served on the investment committee for the endowment.
At Harvard Business School (HBS), David has served since 1998 as a member of the Advisory Board of the Initiative on Social Enterprise. This group oversees all HBS teaching activities and research in non-profit management and philanthropy. (see web link below)
Also at HBS, he has been the Chair of the Alumni Advisory Board for the HBS Social Enterprise Student Club since 1995. This board provides guidance to the student club (roughly 300 members) and helps guide the overall student-related non-profit presence on the campus.
In 2003, David became a member of the Photography Acquisitions Committee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has been collecting photography since 1988. David's own personal collection focuses GeneRally on modernist pictures from the late 1920s, including Bravo, Drtikol, Weston, Quigley and Man Ray, and also enjoys significant holdings of Brandt 1950's and Friedlander 1960's works, plus a variety of contemporary artists.
Charitable Foundations
David is involved with several charitable foundations. He is a trustee and chair of the investment committee of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Since 2001, David has served as a board member, treasurer and chair of the investment committee of The Gill Foundation. From 1999 to 2003, he was a founding trustee of the Goldman Sachs Foundation.
Other Business Interests
David also serves on the advisory board of Indivision India Partners, a Mumbai, India-based private equity firm which is focused primarily on the consumer sector in that country. (see web link below)
Education
Dechman earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1982, where he was a Marshall Hahn scholar and was elected President of Phi Delta Theta social fraternity. His work experience between college and graduate school was in an oil refinery with Chevron Corporation. David earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was elected a student director of the Harvard Cooperative Society. David joined Goldman Sachs following graduation from HBS in 1987.