Meet our Founder

David is a physician and entrepreneur from Milwaukee, WI. David’s medical background is emergency medicine, but he has also trained in Integrative Medicine.

“My three post-college university experiences were transformative in different ways,” David says. “My medical school training at the University of Wisconsin Medical School introduced me to the mystery of the human body and the knowledge and skills of medicine. My MBA program at  Northwestern University taught me how to combine my creative interests with strategic and organized thinking. My fellowship in Integrative Medicine with Andrew Weil, MD through the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine taught me the difference between curing and healing and opened me to the wider world of healing—both on an individual basis and collectively.”

David’s love affair with paper lamp-making began in 1999, when David’s older sister took a lamp making course in San Francisco and then taught David how to make a paper lamp. “I was instantly enchanted, and still find working with illuminated paper to be pure magic! I began giving these lamps away to those in need of healing, comfort, and inspiration. I soon found myself teaching the lamp-making process to others—it was transformative.”

In 2016 David founded the secular nonprofit, The Illumignossi Project, and in 2018 he co-founded OrLanu, a Jewish nonprofit, meaning “Our Light.”  6 Million Lights was inspired by some of the Holocaust survivors and descendants who participated in various light-making workshops through The Illumignossi Project.

“I’m driven by three C’s,” says David. “Creativity in all of its many aspects, Curiosity about this amazing world, and Compassion for my fellow travelers on this human journey we call life.”

In David’s spare time he’s been a musician, playing the Irish whistle, the button accordion, and singing with several bands. He’s also has a decades-long love affair with the outdoors, whether it’s backpacking, mountain biking, exploring claustrophobic desert canyons, or kayaking remote waterways. He has mountain-biked with his four children from Canada to Mexico along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Trail and has kayaked solo across the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. When it’s time to slow down and be more contemplative, he loves spending time at Anam Cara, a remote cabin  in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan which he shares with his wife, Colleen, their four children, and several grandchildren.