Aquarius Advisers Principal David Copithorne has decades of experience providing hands-on corporate and executive communications, issues and crisis management, media relations, and other communications and marketing consulting services for public, private and nonprofit organizations.
A former CEO of Porter Novelli International, one of the world’s largest public relations firms, he has also done extensive social issues advocacy work as a strategic communications advisor for public health and wellness causes.
Dave current provides personal, hands-on C-suite consulting services to a limited number of clients. From his Los Angeles office, he currently works with companies in the semiconductor and financial services industries and serves as a member of the board of directors of a global health media services organization:
- Dave heads up worldwide marketing on a part-time basis for NS Nanotech, Inc., a deep-tech startup developing the world’s first nano-scale submicron LEDs for visible RGB microdisplays, including AR/VR (augmented reality/virtual reality) headsets, and invisible UVC light for disinfection. NS Nanotech is also finalizing development of the world’s first nitride semiconductor emitter of human-safe short-wavelength far-UVC light that can be used to neutralize airborne pathogens that cause Covid-19, influenza, and other deadly infectious diseases.
- He has provided corporate communications, marketing, content, and PR strategy support for more than five years to Capital Advisors Group, a leader in fixed-income asset management for institutional cash investors.
- And Dave is an active member of board of directors of the nonprofit Global Health Media Project, a leading developer of medical teaching videos for front-line health workers in under-resourced locations around the world. Global Health Media’s training videos and animations recently surpassed 1-billion views on its YouTube channel.
Background
Currently based in Southern California, Dave has more than 30 years of experience in corporate and financial communications, consumer and technology marketing, crisis communications, social marketing, journalism and publishing. He is a former CEO of Porter Novelli, one of the world’s largest public relations firms, and as co-founder of Copithorne & Bellows Public Relations, he led one of the fastest-growing high-tech marketing services companies of the 1990s.
In addition to extensive work with senior management of leading global brands, he has provided strategic communications for founders and CEOs of numerous growth companies from their formation and venture capital fundraising through initial public offerings and beyond.
At Copithorne & Bellows (C&B), he worked with Hewlett-Packard, Compaq Computer Corp., Xilinx, Cirrus Logic, and other groundbreaking technology companies, in addition to numerous venture capital-funded startup companies. C&B grew from a two-person Silicon Valley consultancy to a global firm with more than 300 people in 12 offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific.
C&B was acquired by the publicly-held Omnicom Group in 1995, where Dave continued in an executive capacity managing the merger of C&B with two other Omnicom firms, overseeing multiple acquisitions of additional marketing services firms, and running the combined entities. From 2000 to 2002 Dave served as President and then Global CEO of Omnicom’s Porter Novelli International, which at the time was one of the world’s ten largest public relations firms with more than 1,500 employees and more than $200 million in annual revenue. In addition to work with global consumer, technology and health care companies, he supported Porter Novelli’s leadership of the emerging field of social marketing, including its award-winning work with the anti-tobacco Legacy Foundation.
Dave left Madison Avenue in 2002 when an episode of sudden hearing loss deafened him. He started Hearing Mojo, a popular hearing-loss support blog, became an advocate for people with hearing loss, and consulted with numerous hearing-aid manufacturers, and was a contributing editor and advisor to the founder of HearingTracker, the world’s largest self-help site for people with hearing loss. In 2015, bi-lateral cochlear implant surgery proved miraculous in restoring his hearing and enabled him to resume full-time C-suite consulting.
Dave has done extensive additional work for other non-profits and causes:
- He was an unpaid advisor and guest lecturer with the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), assisting with the commercialization of research technology.
- In 2004, as part-time Chief Marketing Officer of Outside The Classroom, a venture capital-backed social enterprise pioneering web-based alcohol prevention and online behavioral health management, he led the company to a national PR Week Award for Best Small Corporate Communications Team in 2004.
- From 2004-2006, he served as a hands-on PR advisor, media spokesperson, and grassroots organizer for the Massachusetts Health Care Reform initiative resulting in the state’s Healthcare for All legislation that served as a template for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
- And from 2007-2010 Dave served as a fundraiser and communications advisor to the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a social action group focusing on healthcare reform, worker rights, and other social and political issues,
A 1975 honors graduate of Harvard, Dave began his career as a journalist who earned a national reputation for his coverage of the U.S. government’s antitrust cases against AT&T and IBM.