Dave Carlson holds a B.S. in Mathematics, an M.S. in Industrial Administration, and a Ph.D. in Engineering; all from the University of Michigan where he also did post-doctoral work in Financial Policy and taught Experimental Psychology and Computer Systems Analysis & Design.

Dave Carlson was a member of the Board of Directors, Electronic Resources Limited, a public Singapore company and a member of the Board of Trustees of Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan. In March of 2019 he joined the board of directors of LifeSignals, Inc. based in Freemont, California. He recently retired as Chairman of the Orange County (OC) Audit Oversight Committee after serving 20 years. He is a graduate of Stanford’s Rock School for Corporate Governance, a joint program of the Stanford Law and Business Schools. In March 2022 he became a member of the Treasury Oversight Committee of OC.

In 1990 and 1991 he made presentations in Moscow to encourage the Soviet Union to adopt technical standards to improve the flow of children’s clothing. In April of 2012 he was a guest of the Chinese government. In Suzhou, China he gave a speech on Customer-focused Cloud Computing with a short introduction in Mandarin. Other travel includes more than 75 trips to Europe and several trips to the Middle East and Asia. He has also been a Guest Lecturer at the London School of Economics and Tel Aviv University.

Dave Carlson has served in senior technology positions in several companies NYSE companies. He was instrumental in moving the retail industry toward technical standards for product barcoding, electronic data interchange and logistical standards.

He has always been interested in business ethics and first taught a class on the subject at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa in 1966.

His industry awards include the Carnegie-Mellon/American Management Systems’ "Award for Achievements in Managing Information Technology;" the Society for Information Management "Partners in Leadership" Award and the Smithsonian Institution "In Search of New Heroes" Award. His contributions to developing and implementing technology standards include serving on the Board of Governors of the Uniform Code Council (now GS1, administrators of the UPC and its symbol) and Chairing the Voluntary Inter-Industry Communications Standards Committee (now also part of GS1.)

His book, “Death by Ego, What We Can Learn from Entrepreneurs Who Kill Their Companies with Hubris” was published in April 2019. It has been used in college level management courses on entrepreneurial studies.

He served in the US Army twice and is a veteran of the Vietnam era.