“Empowering Everyone with True Speed & Agility”

A transformational thought leader, David K Donovan, Executive Vice President & Managing Director at Publicis Sapient, brings in years of expertise working on Wall Street with some of the largest investment banks and asset managers, and has a deep understanding of business, regulatory, operational and technology challenges facing C-suite executives. What sets David apart is his innate desire and ability to learn continuously. Be it macroeconomics trends in the marketplace, to doing deep dives into newer technologies, David takes the time to understand how markets and technology are changing and how they will shape the industry's future.

David also makes it a priority to understand customer needs. He has built a trusted advisor/mentor role to many C suite executives, which allows him to have deep insights into designing products and creative solutions that are customer-centric. David is an inclusive and impactful people leader, leading by example and giving teams a safe space to ‘fail fast’ and be creative, while also making sure each team member feels a sense of belonging and a purpose.

David is devoted to mentoring entrepreneurs and actively involved in the startup community, providing his time and commitment to connecting with early to late stage fintech companies in the Boston area. On several occasions, David has published articles where he has emphasized the ecosystem and connection needed between entrepreneurs, fintechs, and large corporations to succeed in the financial markets collectively. He actively engages with entrepreneurs to learn about markets, guide and mentor them and provide introductions to potential opportunities at the scale and size at which Publicis Sapient operates. A unique entrepreneur partnership model which David recently helped launched is a one of a kind partnership with Tearsheet, a media company focused on technology's impact on the financial services and fintech industry to offer an exciting new product around digital assets for Gen Z.

David has had over 25+ years of experience working from fast-paced financial services markets to running a fast-growing financial services consulting practice. Part of the reason for this success has been David's belief in core leadership principles. Right from the days of playing football for Boston College to running a multimillion-dollar practice. “At Publicis Sapient, we help companies and the public sector keep up with the pace of technological, societal, and cultural change—all while meeting their customers' ever-evolving demands and expectations,” says David. “How? By elevating customer experiences, modernizing organizations, and unlocking value through technology and data.”

David and his team pride themselves on being able to take complex engineering and transformation challenges for customers and apply their global depth and breadth of insights and move at speed to deliver solutions. They fuse startup thinking and agile methods to help established companies and the public sector increase their customer value, drive operational effectiveness, and thrive in an evolving world. With over 30+ years of digital innovation experience, 100+ financial services global clients, 40+ fintech/technology partnerships, and a growing staff at Publicis Sapient, the company is well-positioned to be a partner of success for their customers. “Our people and our culture are our true competitive differentiators.”

An example of such as customer partnership success story was when Publicis recently announced a multi-year collaboration with Goldman Sachs Bank USA (GS Bank), which has launched cutting-edge, digital-native cash and payments services in the marketplace. David said, "Given Publicis Sapient is a digital leader in the financial services space, we are thrilled to work with Goldman Sachs to support the roll-out of their cloud-native transaction banking platform, which is the first all-digital platform in the market." The Goldman Sachs Transaction Banking platform is developed via an API-first approach and will provide innovative products like Virtual Integrated Accounts with enhanced capabilities and features. The platform is US-based for now and will expand to Europe and Asia starting next year. Publicis Groupe has sophisticated cash management operations and will leverage GS's enhanced platform to manage some of its treasury operations.

David is excited about what lies ahead and takes a long-term view for his team’s clients, empowering them with right transformation solutions, even during market turmoil. “Our growth has been underpinned by us having the ability to offer clients creative solutions helping them leverage emerging tech and offer engineering solutions which integrate well with their digital transformations,” says David. “We are at the cusp of a unique time in financial services and incredible amount of systemic change in the industry. Clients are demanding more personalized experiences from financial partners, Cloud has commoditized infrastructure cost, AI is continuing to offer real life use case solutions at scale and the speed and scale of change in breathtaking. This offers opportunities and challenges for organization and we are proud to be a partner with our clients building their digital future collectively.” IE