Dave Greenberg helps leadership teams close the gap between assumed readiness and observed performance under pressure.

He works with boards, executives, and senior leaders across infrastructure, healthcare, education, and other high-consequence sectors who want to understand how their leadership team will actually perform when pressure is real.

25 years at the sharp end. Then the strategic tier.

Dave spent 25 years as a crewman on the Wellington-based Westpac Rescue Helicopter, responding to more than 4,000 missions in conditions where decisions had immediate and often irreversible consequences. From a yacht broadside to 10 metre swells in Cook Strait, to open sea winch rescues, to smoke-filled cockpits at 1,500 metres, the work demanded disciplined decision-making, clear escalation, and calm communication when pressure was real.

He later took the same operational lens into the strategic tier. During New Zealand’s Covid-19 response, Dave served as a Response Manager within the National Outbreak Response Team, working daily with the Director-General of Health, attending Cabinet meetings as an advisor to the Director-General, and operating as Controller during the national response to the Waikato DHB cyber attack.

Two altitudes. Same lesson.

Most organisations operate in assumed readiness.

They have plans. They have policies. They have experienced people.

None of it tells them how their leadership team will actually perform when pressure is high, information is unclear, and decisions matter.

Pressure reveals performance. And the gap between assumed readiness and observed performance is where organisations lose time, clarity, and confidence under pressure. It is also where boards discover too late that the plan in the bottom drawer was never the point.

Dave’s work closes that gap. He does it in two ways: through keynotes that shift how leaders think about pressure, and through private executive simulations that show them how they actually perform under it.

How Dave Works with Organisations

Keynotes

Real-world leadership lessons translated from high-consequence operational experience into practical frameworks senior audiences can use the next morning. Dave’s signature keynote, Brace for Impact: From Crisis to Control, is built around proprietary models including the Crocodile River Model and the BRACE framework, and is delivered to conferences, leadership offsites, and industry association events across New Zealand, Australia, and Asia-Pacific.

Explore Keynotes

Executive Crisis Simulations

Private, structured simulations that observe how a leadership team actually performs when pressure is real. The diagnostic that follows is concise, direct, and board-ready, delivered within seven days. Used by boards and CEOs who want a clear-eyed view of executive crisis capability before a real event tests it.

View Executive Crisis Simulations

Capability Uplift

Targeted strengthening of the gaps a simulation reveals. Not a generic curriculum. Prescribed on the basis of observed behaviour, and delivered by the same person who ran the diagnostic. Includes CIMS training, scenario-based exercising, executive briefings, and follow-on simulations.

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Arrange a Confidential Discussion

A private 30-minute conversation about your organisation, your operating environment, and the pressures your leadership team may face during a major incident or crisis.

Arrange a Confidential Discussion

Credentials

Dave is a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), a CIMS Level 4 instructor, holds a Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management from Massey University, and is the author of Emergency Response: Life, Death and Helicopters (Penguin Random House). He is based in Wellington and works across New Zealand, Australia, and Asia-Pacific.