Work From The Inside Out 142: Get Clear on Where You are Going with Dave Fano
At age 9, Dave Fano started collecting comic books because his big brother was into them. Then, he discovered that different editions and collections had value. By 14, he got a job at a comic book store where he also bought and traded his own comic books. For Dave, it was mostly about having fun, and of course, he enjoyed making money.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Dave grew up in Miami. In high school, he worked for his Dad’s construction company as an estimator. At graduation, he told his Dad that he wanted to go to art school, to be an artist. Dad said, “That's not a real job. You can't make a living doing that. That's a hard life.” So, at the last minute, Dave applied to college and majored in architecture at Columbia University, seeing it as a compromise between art and the design side of construction. But he knew that it wasn't what he wanted to do. Every step of the way, Dave wondered, ‘how can I hack this education to be something else?’ As he finished his undergrad degree, he became aware of 3-D digital architecture which appealed to him as he loved technology. Dave applied to Columbia’s highly competitive graduate program in digital architecture and he got in.
Dave worked as an architect while being on the adjunct faculty at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture for a few years. He then co-founded the technology consulting firm CASE in 2008, growing it to 63 employees. They worked with clients such as Google, Disney and Apple. In 2015 CASE was acquired by their client, WeWork, the coworking space company. At WeWork, Dave held the titles Chief Product Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Development Officer, and eventually Chief Growth Officer.
Today, Dave is focusing his passion on empowering people with tools & resources to grow their careers as Founder & CEO of Teal. He is on a mission to empower professionals with the guidance and resources they need to make career decisions with confidence.
In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn more about Dave’s journey:
- At WeWork, Dave partnered to launch product lines such as WeWork Enterprise, WeWork HQ, and We Membership.
- In under 1 year, the team at Teal has grown the platform & community to over 20,000 users committed to growing their careers.
Learn more and connect with Dave here:
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