David Adler
The Art of a Conversationalist
If you can believe it, David was a shy kid. He was thrown into Washington’s social scene at a young age, following his mom to cocktail parties with the city’s who’s who. She taught him to put his hand out, say hi my name is David and nice to meet you.
At age 16 he spent a month in Maine at an Outward Bound Program, rappelling down mountains, swimming in freezing water and bushwhacking through wilderness. He came back with the confidence to take on the world.
David’s youth in the 1960s was thoroughly Washington. His dad ran a real estate ad agency that ended up naming some of the city’s most iconic apartment buildings like the Watergate or Sterling Park. David campaigned for Kennedy in elementary school. He remembers watching Kennedy’s casket go by right as news hit that Lee Harvey Oswald had been assassinated by Jack Ruby.
He’s always been a bit of a rabble rouser. In high school at Bullis, he was an editor of the newspaper where he surveyed students about their marijuana use. The school administration was apoplectic, but he did it anyway. In college at American University in the mid-1970s, he was on the student government and led a “We Have Had Enough” campaign to demand the school lower tuition. They still increased tuition, but David made the hell sure they felt bad about it.
At age 21, he spun his cocktail know how into a high society publication—called the Washington Dossier. His mom, already a socialite pro, was his editor. He zipped around town, attending sometimes three to four parties a night. At the time he joked his bio should be entitled “Life at the Other End of a Toothpick.” He’d come home every night in black tie attire and his neighbors assumed he was a maître de.
It was a grind that kept him busy 24/7 for 12 years. It had grown from a 16-page newsletter in 1975 to a 300-page glossy magazine when he sold the business in 1988. Some of the most popular editions were especially juicy. The “Senatorial Dossier” included Senators’ bad habits. For then-Senator Rockefeller (and multi-billionaire), it was that he forgot to pay back people after he borrowed money.
British media lord Robert Maxwell caught wind of David’s public relations talents and hired him to run corporate communications for his conglomerate, Macmillan Inc., in New York City. David would fight media battles against Maxwell’s arch nemesis Rupert Murdoch. Parties were thrown on Maxwell’s yacht with minor celebrities like Donald Trump aboard.
When he went to the 350+ media property behemoth Primedia as VP of Corporate Communications, David would add his signature dash of humor to what seemed like mundane magazines. Dog World and Cats magazine featured a debate between Bill Clinton’s cat and Bob Dole’s dog. Hog Farmer magazine endorsed Babe for an Academy Award.
David kept on innovating in print media, returning to his knack for bringing people together, this time nationally. He started BizBash in 2000, which became the largest trade media for event organizers. When he sold it in 2019, it had 200,000 users.
Now back in the District, he feels like he never really left home. He’s ready to tie together all the pieces of his life to help others become collaboration artists—where ideas turn into action because we talk to and learn from each other. “If you give people permission to talk to each other,” he says, “great things happen.” It’s all in a book he recently published called Collaboration Artists, Conveners and Connectors on Harnessing Serendipity.
When David starts a speech, he first allows the audience to speak to the person next to them. He judges an event not by how many people attend, but by how many conversations are curated. He loves hosting “Jeffersonian” dinner parties, where the art of conversation is carefully facilitated. He breaks the ice by asking everyone what their first job was and what they learned from it. It democratizes the room and builds intimacy for honest conversation.
He hopes to make more Washingtonians into collaboration artists as a way to try to get out of the partisan rut. His optimism and energy are infectious, which is probably why he draws people in. As a gay man, he’s had to confront himself directly and honestly. That breeds confidence. “I’ve always been good at being myself,” he says. He’s taking on the world one conversation at a time.
Harnessing Serendipity is available now.