I’m inspired by the thunderbolts of insight that shatter old ways of seeing and open new paths.
People get blocked and stuck and live in ways that prevent them from having the life they truly deserve.
Coaching helps you see how you limit your own power and possibility, helping you build new ways of being so you can live with clarity, purpose, and freedom, fully aligned with who you truly are.
It's a powerful journey.”
I'm David Perry, an Ontological Executive and Leadership Coach based in Zürich. I work with senior leaders in tech, people who are already high-performing and want the capacity to sustain it without burning out or losing themselves along the way.
My approach draws on the ontological tradition of coaching, working across language, emotion, and body, combined with mindfulness practice. Before coaching, I spent 30 years in high-tech as a software engineer at Silicon Valley startups, including pioneering work on early RAID storage systems. That background means I understand the pressure, pace, and thinking of the leaders I coach, because I lived it myself.
Below is the longer story of how I got here.
From Engineer to Executive Coach
I was born and raised in New Jersey, always curious about how things work. I started programming in high school, studied Electrical Engineering at Rutgers, and moved to Santa Cruz, California, drawn by Silicon Valley's technology and energy. Over nearly 30 years there, I worked as a software engineer and technical leader in data storage, including pioneering early RAID storage systems.
I moved to Switzerland in 2010 to be closer to family, and in 2016, I left Dell Computer to find what was next. I trained as an Ontological Coach with Hans Phillips at Ontoco and founded PURECOACH in 2018. Today, I work full-time as an Ontological Executive and Leadership Coach and Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, facilitating for the Coaching.com community and leading a Mastermind group at Impact Hub Zürich. My daughter, whom I raised here, now works as a doctor in Zürich.
Professional Achievements
Nearly 30 years as a software engineer and technical leader in Silicon Valley data storage, including 15 years in leadership roles and pioneering work on early RAID storage systems.
Founder and owner of PURECOACH, an Ontological and High-Performance coaching consultancy, since 2018.
Certified Ontological Coach (Ontoco and Newfield Institute) and Mindfulness Meditation Teacher.
Facilitator within the Coaching.com ecosystem, including Implementation Master sessions, Coaching Circles, and the Burnout Coaching Certification program
Founded and leading a mastermind group at Impact Hub Zürich.
Hosting and leading intensive coaching and meditation retreats in the Swiss Alps.
Coached over 200 clients, from scientists to small business owners to senior executives in large corporations.
My Journey
I've been drawn to personal growth and transformation since my early 20s, when a friend at university gave me M. Scott Peck's "The Road Less Traveled." What it revealed was that others out there understood my struggle, and we could help each other. It taught me about love, discipline, and how to be in the world, and it started a lifelong exploration of meaning and happiness.
After university, I had a number of jobs, romantic relationships, and the usual challenges. I got married, had a family, and got divorced. I continued my exploration of personal growth, but I never found the real freedom, meaning, or happiness that I was looking for.
Over and over, I repeated the same unsatisfying and unfulfilling patterns in my relationships with family, friends, and bosses. A relationship I deeply valued had ended, and though losing it was a real grief, I could see my own patterns had helped make it unsustainable. Now I was standing at the start of something new with the woman who would become my wife, and I knew with total clarity that it would end the same way as all the others if nothing changed. That was the moment I became determined to solve the patterns I'd been living in, before I lost something precious all over again.
And I realized that even with all the coaching I’d been through and growth work I’d done, I didn’t have the tools I needed for this job. I was stuck and didn’t know how to move forward on my own. I needed a radical change.
In desperation, I signed up for a three-day transformational seminar in San Francisco I'd heard about for years. It promised that anything I envisioned for my life would be possible. And it worked. By the end, I saw that the only thing between me and the life I wanted was my own limiting beliefs about myself and the world. It got me unstuck and launched a trajectory of growth that has transformed my life. Today, my life, work, and relationships are more authentic, satisfying, and fulfilling than ever.
That doesn’t mean that everything is perfect, and it doesn’t mean that those old dysfunctional patterns aren’t still hanging around and causing problems, but I’m working through them powerfully every day.
My journey from M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled”…to the failures I’ve had throughout the years…leading up to my transformational weekend in San Francisco…through all the coaching and transformational work…and the personal and spiritual growth I’ve accomplished…
…that journey took me 30 years.
My purpose today is to shorten that journey for others.
To help people to live their dream life now instead of 30 years from now.
That’s why I became a certified Ontological Executive and Leadership Coach, and that’s why I love to coach incredible people every day.
My Vision
For the leaders I work with, my vision is about sustainable high performance: the capacity to lead powerfully without sacrificing health, relationships, or integrity along the way.
Purecoach is dedicated to improving the lives of all human beings because everyone deserves to be happy, fulfilled, purposeful, joyful, liberated, and self-actualized. We all develop, over time, rigid and limiting contexts that define our world. Many things become impossible for us from within the constraints of this way of being-in-the-world, and this is the reason we’re unable to achieve our true desires. Purecoach is a stand for the impossible becoming possible through awareness, insight, wisdom, and action toward a designed future.
My Mission
In practice, my mission is to surface the beliefs quietly limiting your leadership and build new capacities for presence, decision-making, and action under pressure.
Purecoach provides Ontological Coaching and Consulting Services targeted at personal transformation through an analysis of the client’s context of self-limiting beliefs, generating the possibility of new ways of being for the client, and creating actions to move the client into that new realm of being. Clients experience increased levels of authenticity, integrity, and connection in all relationships; more distinguishing and empowering interpretations across all areas of life; greater joy and satisfaction with life; and more powerful actions and decisions all the time. The overall objective is to liberate people to live happier, more fulfilled lives.
Education
Burnout Coaching Certification, Coaching.com, Oct. 2025 - Apr. 2026
Ontological Coaching and Leadership in Action, Ontological Coaching Institute, 2022-2024
Ontological coaching training, Ontoco.com, 2016-2018
Rich Litvin Intensive (2020, 2021, 2022)
Rich Litvin, 100 Days of Coaching, April-June, 2020
Rutgers University Engineering School – BSEE 1987
Start with a First Look
If anything here resonates, the best next step is a First Look: a free 20-minute conversation, no pitch, no pressure. We'll talk about what's on your mind as a leader and whether coaching is the right fit. If it's not, I'll happily point you elsewhere.
Book a First Look directly, or send me a message if you'd rather start with a question.