David Friedman

David Friedman is serving as SPUR’s interim president and CEO, bringing decades of leadership in both organizational management and structural engineering.

Previously, he was a senior principal, emeritus chair of the board of directors, president and CEO of Forell/Elsesser Engineers, where he spent more than 45 years in professional practice, including 40 years at the firm. His strength, gained over the breadth and depth of his career, is a holistic perspective on project planning, design and construction, as well as the collaborative integration of creative structural solutions with architects, engineers and builders. With a specialty in seismic engineering and retrofitting existing structures, particularly those with historic designation, he has solved numerous structural and earthquake engineering challenges during his career with Forell/Elsesser Engineers. Principal examples of his projects include the base isolation retrofits of San Francisco City Hall and the Asian Art Museum, the adaptive reuse and retrofit of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the seismic safety corrections and remodeling of UC Berkeley’s California Memorial Stadium.

David is devoted to worldwide seismic risk reduction and is the current president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to learning from earthquakes worldwide and advancing practices that reduce risk and improve resilience. In addition to SPUR, he is also deeply involved in other civic, philanthropic and nonprofit boards, including The San Francisco Foundation, the UC Berkeley Foundation and the Jewish Home of San Francisco.