David Gage, Ph.D.

TPCI Founder, Psychologist, Author, and Mediator

David is a clinical psychologist, author, and mediator who has specialized in working with business partners for over 30 years. He transitioned from a successful private practice as a clinical psychologist in Washington, DC and Bethesda, Maryland to the person most recognized for giving business partners a clear pathway to healthy partnerships.

David founded the first firm to focused exclusively on resolving disputes among co-owners of closely held business in 1990. BMC Associates completely revolutionized the way partners resolve their often highly contentious relationships. His firm’s associates were all mediators with backgrounds in law, business, psychology, and finance. The multidisciplinary team traveled across the U.S. giving partners a collaborative alternative to suing one another (or suffering in silence). Mediation allowed the partners – instead of judges or arbitrators – to stay in control of the outcome of their disputes. By mediating hundreds of intimate partner battles David learned everything he needed to know to shift his focus to conflict prevention.

During the 1990s David served as an adjunct professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington where he designed and taught a course for MBA students on how to be successful with family, or non-family, partners. Surprisingly, it was the only business school course in the country to focus on co-ownership.

Zeroing in on conflict prevention gave rise to the Partnership Charter process and David’s book, The Partnership Charter: How To Start Out Right With Your New Business Partnership (Or Fix The One You’re In), which was published in 2004 by Basic Books. During the early 2000s, David and his team fine-tuned that process and The Partnership Charter Workbook with feedback from hundreds of partners from around the world. Between 2019 to 2022, David worked closely with a team to design and develop the Partnership Charter’s “Design Your Partnership” platform. It was thoroughly tested and fine-tuned in 2022-2023 and officially launched in October of 2023.

For over two decades publications large and small have been highlighting David’s pioneering Partnership Charter methodology for designing partnerships.

David was raised in an entrepreneurial family long before the term existed. He remains a co-owner in two third-generation family businesses headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin. David attended the U.S. Naval Academy from 1969-1971 and then graduated with Distinction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975. He received his Ph.D. from Catholic University in Washington in 1983. With a partner, he ran a private practice specializing in individual, couple, group, and family therapy in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, DC. Together they co-founded the DC Institute for Hypnotherapy. David played a small role in the nascent family therapy movement in the U.S. in the 1980s, first as a supervisor at the Family Therapy Practice Center in Washington, and then as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. He trained in mediation during the mid-1980s at the DC Superior Court before becoming a trainer and consultant to the court’s mediation program. He founded BMC Associates (originally Business Mediation Associates) in 1990 and The Partnership Charter Institute in 2017.