David Whitby is Chief Executive of Pathmaster Marketing Ltd, a business development consultancy for the international downstream oil, gas and energy industries, which he founded in 1992. Pathmaster Marketing has advised clients in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Russia, the US, Canada, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia on business planning, business strategy, market development and technology commercialisation. Specialist sectors include lubricants, fuels, new energies and speciality chemicals. An Australian by birth, David began his career with British Petroleum, as a process chemist in a refinery in Western Australia. He worked for BP for 22 years in a number of management positions, including Marketing and Business Development Manager at Kalsep (an advanced separations company), Business Manager at BP Ventures, Project Leader for Industrial Lubricants at BP Research and Marketing Services Officer at Duckhams Oils. David was Programme Director for Lubricants Courses at the Oxford Princeton Programme and he ran the Advanced Lubrication Training Programme for the UK Lubricants Association. He has written numerous papers and articles on lubricants, has chaired and lectured to international conferences and directed over 120 training lubricants courses in more than 30 countries. He writes the bimonthly "Worldwide" column for Tribology and Lubrication Tribology, published by the US Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers. In addition to running Pathmaster Marketing, David was Non-Executive Chairman of Microbial Solutions Ltd., a start-up from the University of Oxford, from 2007 to 2015, and a Non-Executive Director of the Sonic Development Company Ltd., from 1998 to 2003. His first book, "Lubricant Blending and Quality Assurance", was published by CRC Press in 2019. David has lived in Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom, for more than 38 years and is married with two daughters and four grandchildren.
