David Maister

David H. Maister (born July 21, 1947) is a former Harvard Business School professor, American writer and expert on business management practices and the management of professional service firms.

He is best known for writing Managing the Professional Service Firm and co-writing The Trusted Advisor with Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford.

Maister holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, economics and statistics from the University of Birmingham (1968), a master's degree in operations research from the London School of Economics (1971) and obtained his doctorate in business from the Harvard Business School (1976).

During the period when he was obtaining his formal education he worked as a statistician at Bell Canada (Montreal), and as a lecturer in economics and statistics at the Polytechnic of the South Bank (now known as London South Bank University.)

As an academic, his initial teaching, research and publishing focus was in the area of logistics, transportation, and operations management he authored (or co-authored) seven books while teaching at the University of British Columbia, Canada (1976–1978), and the Harvard Business School (1979–1985).

In 1985, he left Harvard Business School to spend full-time consulting to professional firms.

In 2002, he was named as one of the top 40 business thinkers in the world (Business Minds, by Tom Brown, Prentice Hall/Financial Times).

Born and raised in London, England, Maister became a citizen of the United States in 2006.

He retired in 2009.

He lives in Boston with his wife, Kathy Maister.

David is married to Kathy Maister, who is a home economics teacher-turned-video blogger and has a cooking blog at StartCooking.com