Biography

David E. Childers, CPA (“Dave”) is the Portfolio Manager at B.E. Blank & Company. He is a licensed Certified Public Accountant (“CPA”) in Florida with a deep background in business and data analytics, coupled with meaningful Big Four audit experience of direct lenders, broker dealers, and other complex investment vehicles in the financial services industry.

Dave spent the first eleven years of his professional career as a Naval Officer. In the first part of his Naval career, Dave flew the P-3C Orion and P-8A Poseidon airframes while conducting migrant, counter-narcotic, and anti-submarine deployments in El Salvador, Italy, and Japan. While in Italy, Dave flew humanitarian missions supporting the safety of “life at sea” refugees escaping war-torn Libya. He subsequently served as the Navy advisor to an interagency task force specializing in counter-narcotic operations. Afterwards, Dave served as the Deputy Air Officer at a joint Navy and Marine Corps task force in the Kingdom of Bahrain where he assisted with the planning and execution of crisis and contingency operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. During his Naval career, Dave led teams as large as 25 people and budgets of up to two million dollars. His personal awards include three Navy Commendation Medals and one Navy Achievement Medal. Dave left active duty in 2019 and continues to serve as a Lieutenant Commander in the drilling reserves.

After leaving active-duty, Dave joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (“PwC”) as an audit associate where his clients were primarily based in the financial services sector, including the lending and broker-dealer industries. As a part of his audit career, he has experience with analyzing lending portfolios, debt covenant testing, internal controls testing, and compliance analysis. He passed the four-part CPA exam while working full-time and was licensed as a CPA in September 2020.

Dave is currently completing a Master of Science in Quantitative Management – Business Data Analytics from Duke University, which focuses on the use of machine learning and other strategies for analyzing data and predicting future outcomes. As B.E. Blank & Company continues to refine its data collection strategy, Dave’s background in Data Analysis will provide immense benefit in analyzing trends and outcomes within the portfolio.

Dave holds a Bachelor of Business Administration with a major in Finance from the University of Notre Dame, a Master in Accounting from Florida Atlantic University, and a Master in Business Administration (“MBA”) from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar for being in the top ten percent of his graduating class.