David O. King helps CEOs and executive teams improve profitable growth when pricing, customer priorities, and commercial execution are no longer keeping pace with the business.
A Partner at TechCXO, he brings more than 25 years of experience spanning commercial leadership, revenue optimization, and operating model transformation at organizations including American Airlines, Carnival Cruise Lines, United Airlines Cargo, A.P. Moller–Maersk, and SEKO Logistics.
David specializes in helping CEOs, investors, and executive leadership teams identify and capture opportunities to improve revenue, margins, and enterprise value. His approach integrates commercial strategy, organizational design, pricing and revenue optimization, business processes, and technology to address the underlying drivers of commercial performance.
His expertise encompasses the economics and operating mechanisms of revenue generation, including demand forecasting, pricing, customer segmentation, capacity allocation, commercial governance, and revenue management. He has led commercial organizations and the development of analytical and digital capabilities that support better decisions, combining executive operating experience with the ability to translate business requirements into practical decision tools.
David’s experience is particularly relevant to middle-market and private equity-backed organizations seeking to professionalize commercial operations, accelerate profitable growth, integrate acquisitions, improve revenue predictability, or establish scalable operating capabilities. He works with organizations facing challenges such as:
- Revenue growth that outpaces margin improvement, weak pricing discipline, or difficult-to-explain revenue leakage.
- Growth or acquisitions that have fragmented commercial roles, customer coverage, forecasting, and accountability.
- Sales, pricing, and operations functions that need a shared operating model and more reliable commercial decisions.
- Opportunities to apply analytics, automation, and AI to defined commercial problems by connecting strategy, business requirements, and execution.
His current advisory focus includes translating strategy into data-driven processes, analytics, automation, and AI-enabled commercial decision support. Practical applications include pricing discipline, revenue completeness, customer profitability, forecasting, and accountability for commercial exceptions.
Executive Leadership and Commercial Transformation
At United Airlines Cargo, David served as Managing Director, Cargo Revenue Management & Sales Strategy, leading the global revenue management and sales strategy organization and reporting to the President of United Cargo. His responsibilities connected pricing, capacity management, revenue optimization, forecasting, revenue planning, and sales strategy across a complex global cargo network.
He led enterprise revenue management systems and process transformation, including oversight of a next-generation cargo revenue management platform integrating capacity and demand forecasting, overbooking, allotment management, and booking evaluation. He also advanced commercial frameworks for joint ventures with All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Lufthansa Cargo, aligning pricing, revenue management, sales strategy, network planning, and governance across partner organizations.
Earlier, as Director, Cargo Sales – Americas, David led sales across North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Following the Continental–United merger, he redesigned customer coverage, leadership, and resource allocation, consolidating six U.S. sales regions into three. These initiatives contributed to an estimated 2–3% improvement in operating margins across a business exceeding $350 million.
In an earlier Postal Network Optimization & Performance role, David led a cross-functional strategic customer recovery initiative involving Commercial, Operations, Industrial Engineering, and executive leadership. The team restored customer confidence within six months and protected more than $150 million in annual revenue.
At A.P. Moller–Maersk, David played a leadership role in transforming commercial decision-making within one of the world’s largest container shipping and integrated logistics enterprises. Serving as a senior commercial product leader, he worked across Commercial, Engineering, and Data Science, leading agile product development and translating complex business requirements into enterprise technology capabilities.
His work supported forecasting, revenue optimization, and automated capacity allocation, including commercial optimization capabilities associated with Maersk Spot’s digital pricing and booking experience. The enterprise program delivered capabilities supporting a targeted $289 million topline opportunity, illustrating the scale of the commercial opportunity addressed by integrated forecasting, pricing, and capacity decisions.
As Senior Vice President, Commercial at SEKO Logistics, David led commercial excellence and revenue optimization initiatives with executive responsibility for Global Air Product, Global Rate Management, and Global Tender Management.
He designed and led a global Commercial Excellence transformation addressing fragmented commercial processes, inconsistent customer prioritization, pricing governance, and opportunities to improve profitable revenue growth. His work included developing ideal customer profiles, customer segmentation frameworks, commercial operating model improvements, and pricing governance processes designed to align Sales, Product, Operations, and Technology around shared commercial objectives.
These initiatives established the foundation for projected multimillion-dollar revenue and margin improvement opportunities. David also led the design and successful launch of a multimillion-dollar cross-border logistics solution supporting Amazon, translating complex customer requirements into scalable operating capabilities.
Strategic Advisory and Operating Experience
Through his independent advisory practice, David O King Advisory, LLC, David has worked with executive leadership teams on commercial strategy, revenue optimization, organizational transformation, and complex business initiatives. His advisory work combines strategic problem-solving with hands-on implementation, particularly where organizations require cross-functional alignment, improved commercial governance, or the development of new operating capabilities.
As Senior Advisor to Amerijet International, he owned Maersk Air Cargo’s transpacific service launch, leading launch readiness across Commercial, Flight Operations, Technical Operations, Ground Operations, Finance, Legal, Regulatory, and Network Planning.
David’s earlier career includes airline finance and business planning at American Airlines, revenue management at Carnival Cruise Lines and Continental Airlines Cargo, and revenue management strategy consulting at Revenue Analytics. This experience established his foundation in finance, customer economics, constrained capacity, pricing, and service-business profitability.
His advisory capabilities span commercial strategy and growth, pricing and margin optimization, customer segmentation, revenue management, post-merger commercial integration, operating model transformation, and technology-enabled commercial execution.
Board Leadership and Education
David serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) and Vice Chair of its Development Committee. He previously chaired its Finance & Investment Committee, with governance work encompassing committee and policy modernization, investment oversight, and succession support.
He also serves on the industry-elected Board of Directors of the Airforwarders Association, where he leads committee work addressing truck fraud and cargo theft, industry education, and collaboration with policymakers and law enforcement.
David holds an MBA from the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston and a BBA in Finance from The University of Texas at Austin. A CIEE alumnus, he studied in Seville, Spain, through its Business and Society program.
He is fluent in English and Spanish and proficient in French.