I could make my life sound far, far better than it has been. And at the same time, I could make it sound far worse than it has been. Life–for me–has been one BIG shock. It still is. Life has been harsh and endlessly challenging. And it has been incredibly rich and rewarding. At certain times, things happened, persons met, opportunities given or lost of shunned or embraced, that have shaped my life more than anything. From the top down:
- Being born from a mother and father who were BOTH school teachers.
- Being born in a family, where my father made a huge mistake, right when I was born, resulting in my parents being deeply focused on honesty.
- Deciding to be an architect at age ten. Imagine looking up, at age thirty, and finding yourself living what a young boy decided. This is at once good and bad.
- Starting 49 years of running, at age 11.8.
- Learning of a tuition free, private school, and despite being told my odds of admission was nearly impossible, being accepted on merrit, not highest grades.
- Being enrolled in the Dean of The Cooper Union’s freshman design class, while still just 17 years old.
- Being told by a student, ‘You must have a process’.
- Working for a Japanese company, right out of school, where serendipitously a man fluent in Japanese met with me, telling me I could learn the entire Toyo Kanji, one bit a time.
- Through that meeting, providentially meeting the very great Korean Zen Master, Dae Soen Sa Nim THEN being invited to travel with him, and living in a Zen Temple in Seoul.
- My first mentor, who was such an accomplished gamesman, that he not only was a bridge master, chess expert, but even played Rod Laver in the Italian open and was at Wimbledon, invited me, to house sit in the deep south.
- Get hired by a small boutique architectural firm, and learning to manage architecture projects correctly, right next door to a holistic health store that started me on the right road.
- Learning about mutual funds, then starting to trade stocks.
- Getting into Mountaineering, and ultimately trained in snow and ice school.
- Providentially meeting a young man, who was reputed to manage 10% of the stock money of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, which ultimately got me hired as a developing stock broker.
- Meeting my guru Joy, who lived for eight years in India, with Transcendental Meditation founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
- After buying and selling some two-hundred million in stocks, nearly making senior VP at Morgan Stanley, took a job at a big box building materials retailer, meeting at least three-hundred thousand persons, in a neighborhood where 76% of the population were black or Asian. Intense.
- Going into a very severe depression, seeking help, then ultimately working my way out of it, without pharmacology, all with natural food, food supplements, meditation, cleansing emotionally and physically.
- Taking a basic rock class, then deciding after, it was far more efficient to hire a private guide, to take me to remarkable places, going one on one.
- Resuming tournament chess. Doing tens of thousands of online tactical problems at a marked degree of accuracy.
- Learning to do html on WordPress AFTER figuring out, Google blogger was a dead end.
- Moving back to New Jersey, beginning independent consulting, and cutting my teeth in enterprise, across a very wide range of clientele.
- Running my own after-school chess programs, as a volunteer.
Knowledge manager, who can create, plan, furnish, operate, refine, and deliver complex processes involving people, products, results.
David Korn Special Projects 
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