About

DAVID E. SHELLENBERGER

Professional

Dave is an advocate for international liberty and international animal welfare.

He is also a professional coach, focusing on helping CEOs, other leaders, and entrepreneurs achieve their goals and live fulfilling lives. He additionally does personal coaching, helping people solve problems, make decisions, achieve career success, and flourish.

He has been trained by the well-recognized Coaches Training Institute (now known as Co-Active Training Institute) to enhance the skills he has acquired through decades of experience in coaching, mentoring, and counseling.

The practice is national and international, via telephone or video conference. The Facebook page for the practice is David E. Shellenberger Coaching. See, too, Dave’s profile on LinkedIn.

Please get in touch with Dave at dshellcoach@gmail.com to explore becoming a client.

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Libertarians seek limited or no government, free markets, and individual liberty. Dave has evolved from supporting limited government (minarchism) to favoring anarchism. Anarchy means “no ruler.” Dave believes libertarianism is the compassionate political philosophy.

In the past, Dave worked as a securities attorney. He was a pioneer in investor rights, with his own law firm in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1989 to 1998. He represented victims of Wall Street’s fraud and abuse and advocated for regulators’ attention to the problems. During this period, for several years, he also was an adjunct instructor in Business Law at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He enjoyed teaching both undergraduate and MBA students.

Dave next served as Chief of Licensing for the Massachusetts Securities Division, leading the national efforts to expose fraud in the day trading industry. This included acting as the lead writer and editor of the official report, and testifying before a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

He then was Chief Counsel for the New York office of NASD (now FINRA), which regulates the brokerage industry, heading enforcement for the region. Business Week called him a “no-nonsense regulator.” After that he worked as an in-house counsel and executive in the industry, leading the development of cutting-edge compliance systems.

After repeatedly making his mark as an anti-fraud attorney, Dave determined to pursue his decades-long interest in communicating the libertarian viewpoint. He has always been a friend of the underdog and believes government oppression is the greatest threat to individuals throughout the world. Wise investors can avoid Wall Street, using no-load index funds. But people cannot avoid government; the relationship is involuntary and implicitly illegitimate.

His work for liberty includes writing, mentoring, and public speaking. He has made presentations by Skype to groups in Ghana and Afghanistan. In June 2019, he served on a panel on populism at PorcFest in New Hampshire, a Free State Project event. In 2020, he spoke on freeing immigration and trade in a webinar with Nigeria Students for Liberty. 

Compassion is the foundation for Dave’s advocacy for animal welfare as well as for liberty. In addition to writing and mentoring in the field, he leads the Facebook group OR-7 Wandering Wolf of America. The group now covers international wildlife conservation and animal welfare and the understanding and appreciation of nature.

Personal

Dave’s late parents were renowned residential camping YMCA executives.

Dave spent his first years in upstate New York and then several years in Oklahoma. After that, his family settled in Framingham, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. Because of his parents’ work, Dave had the benefit of enjoying the natural environment and meeting people from all over the world. He also traveled to Europe and Japan on YMCA trips and later led a trip to Japan.

Dave earned his B.A. in Environmental Science from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and his J.D. from Boston University School of Law. He currently lives in Connecticut.

“I Survived” Series

In 2016, while living in Virginia, Dave endured a home invasion. His “I Survived” series on the website, being completed, tells the story. In Part V, he explains,

My goal is to help heighten people’s awareness of the risk of crime; help those who have experienced trauma and those who wish to be supportive of them; offer ideas for those who want to make their homes safer; and discuss my thoughts on the criminal justice system and the need for change.