JEFF’S BACKGROUND …

A   S T O R Y   U N F O L D S

Today, I work as a documentary filmmaker and photographer, producer for PBS and other television programming, and fundraiser and advocate for a range of causes. Through the years, I traveled and worked in over fifty countries. I remain captivated by nature and connections with diverse people and cultures.

I am drawn to the power of compelling story and inspirational change.

Before this professional journey, I served in marketing and leadership commitments with media and technology companies and nonprofit organizations.  In my most recent management role, I served as CEO for Edgewood Center, a 160-year-old thriving nonprofit organization that supports vulnerable children and families. In this leadership commitment, I worked with 400 professional staff and roughly 700 volunteers in San Francisco and San Mateo County and led a diverse set of child welfare, mental health, education, and community services.

My experience in recent years includes initiatives with photography, film, public television, print publishing, and web based communication. Exhibits, annual reports, fund raising campaigns, magazines, newspapers, blogs, social media, website publishing, foundation presentations, awareness and donor campaigns. Powerful memories.  Many moments changed and impacted my values, perspectives, and dreams – living with abandoned children in a remote orphanage near Calcutta, working with over six hundred nuns in Dharamsala, India, teaching and supporting Gwich’in children in Artic Village, producing a short documentary film on a tragic mudslide that impacted Mayan children in their Guatemalan village, traveling in 4×4 vehicles with compassionate nurses and doctors to rural health centers in the poorest regions of central and southern Malawi, leading photo cultural tours in Tibet, Cuba, northern Europe and other regions of the world, documenting reconstructive surgery for the poor in Bangladesh, Zambia, and Tanzania, living in Pujehun, a remote region of Sierra Leone, for four months, witnessing the hunger for education and training throughout the world in schools and communities, and other commitments linger. 

I continue to cherish the wilderness and diverse cultures. Through the years, I jumped at the chance to explore remote open spaces in Bhutan, Tibet, Iceland, Nepal, Kenya, Vietnam, Norway, Morocco, Tanzania, Peru, Kenya, Namibia, Alaska, Alberta, Zambia, New Zealand, British Columbia, Argentina, Chile, Newfoundland, and other regions of the world. Cultural tours remain in my mix as well.  I recently returned from my third trip to Cuba, an intoxicating location for a traveler, photographer, and storyteller – many challenges, tremendous hope, and deep history.


Teaching a young Quechua girl about photography in Peru

In terms of formal education, I was fortunate to study product design, engineering, humanities, and other topics at Stanford University and business management at Harvard University.

 

I hold a long-held passion for cycling and other sports. I crossed the country twice on a bicycle and rolled through a major cycling trip in Europe. The world has a special feel when you travel by bike. Triathlon touched my earlier life. Swim, bike, run, laugh, struggle, dream, and reach. I completed dozens of races across the U.S., Canada, Switzerland, and New Zealand including three IronMan events.

 

For a more complete bio, please download the PDF below (click on the underlined text below):

Jeff Davis’ Two Page Bio 2016

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A Quick Snapshot – Working with Tibetan children in India

Several years ago, in the midst of playful conversation, a young Tibetan child who lives in Dharamsala asked me “What’s a frog?  How do these animals move across the earth?”  He had never seen a frog, but heard these animals existed in wet climates at lower elevation. With much laughter, I led a group of energetic children as we explored these and other essential questions.  Joyful moments evolved.