David was born in Colombia, and grew up in Peru and Jamaica before moving to Canada at the age of ten. He began his profession at the University of Ottawa studying chemical ecology of medicinal plants with John Arnason, moved on to a MSc in wood genetics at the University of British Columbia with the late Carl Douglas and completed a PhD on agricultural microbiology with Manish Raizada at the University of Guelph. He has been a visiting researcher at Biodiversity International in Italy (education policy), at the International Potato Research Institute in Peru (nutrient genetics of potatoes), at EMBRAPA Agrobiology in Brazil (microbial ecology of maize) and most recently at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia (dynamics of plant microbiomes). After a postdoc (emerging diseases of tomato) with George Lazarovits at A&L Biologicals, he moved to Boston as the founding employee of the endophyte-focused startup Indigo Agriculture, where built their initial strain collections, developed formulations for seed inoculants, tested microbes in field trials and provided the scientific foundations for patents. Seeking new challenges, he moved to Cali, Colombia to study the plant microbial ecology of one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, working as Principal Investigator and Max Planck Tandem Group Leader at Universidad del Valle in cooperation with Paul Schulze-Lefert at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany.