Dave Finnegan is an award winning retail innovator, brand anthropologist and storyteller with over 25 years of experience leading customer experience and digital transformation. He helped launch Build-A-Bear Workshop and later served as Chief Experience Officer at Orvis, driving the brand’s most successful era. Dave now advises brands and investors through roles at BlackFinn, the NRF and NewRoad Capital Partners.
As a brand anthropologist and a member of the Explorers Club, in 2022 Dave dedicated a year to studying human experience. He traveled to every continent—interviewing indigenous leaders from the Amazon to Africa, scientists from Antarctica to the Galápagos and some of the most interesting people in the world, including the librarian of the world’s oldest library at the Monastery of St. Catherine. He is currently pursuing a master’s in Anthropology at Harvard which is helping him to continue his journey to better understand human experience.
