David Durfey

Background

About David Durfey

I believe the best organizations are built on a simple truth: when you invest deeply in people, they invest deeply in the mission. After 19 years in HR leadership, I’ve stopped treating that as a philosophy and started treating it as a business strategy.For the past eight years at Trek Bicycle, I’ve led people strategy for 3,500+ employees across North America, overseeing 70% of the company’s global workforce, through one of the most ambitious growth periods in the company’s history. Fifty-five percent company expansion. A pandemic. An enterprise-wide Workday implementation across all global markets. The integration of 250+ acquired retail locations. Three consecutive Fortune 100 Best Place to Work recognitions (2023, 2024, 2025). None of that happens without treating HR as a core driver of business performance rather than a support function.Where I Do My Best WorkI partner with C-suite leaders on challenges that don’t have playbook answers: scaling HR infrastructure during hypergrowth, transforming culture while preserving what makes it distinctive, and building people systems that hold up under pressure. My career started on the front lines, running a Snap-on mobile retail operation before moving into HR, which taught me that great strategy only matters if it works for the person doing the job. That perspective shapes everything I build. I lead with the conviction that empathetic leadership and high standards aren’t in tension. In high-performing organizations, they make each other stronger.What That Looks Like in PracticeReducing retail manager turnover from 27% to 20% by reimagining how we hire and develop leaders, rebuilding our interview process around competency-based assessments and pairing that with intentional onboarding and leadership development that set managers up to stay and succeed. Improving company-wide retention from 89% to 97%. Delivering a $40M revenue lift through superior customer and employee experience. Maintaining an 85% internal Net Promoter Score through rapid organizational change. These aren’t HR metrics. They’re business results that started with people decisions.I’m always glad to connect with HR leaders, business operators, and executives thinking deeply about how to keep organizations human while scaling fast.