Our Team

David Gilliland

Founder & Imagineer

Between Tennessee, California, and over a hundred other cities in the early 70s, David designed and built lighting systems and special effects for major music artists, blending visual art with marketing strategies. He developed a broad technical skill set and consulting resources, designing animated set pieces, laser effects, pyrotechnics, and props.

By the 1980s, he leveraged this expertise into technology, consulting, and investing in the nascent personal computer industry in Northern California. His ventures included the first spelling checker software, one of the first multimedia platforms, and optical disk multi-media storage systems, co-patenting high-power fiber optic light gate technology.

In the 1990s, he moved to London to develop large-scale structured finance projects, overseeing private wealth participants across four continents. Returning to Key West later that decade, he worked alongside Mel Fisher’s organization recovering artifacts from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha that sank off the Florida coast in a hurricane. During this time he endured three giving him personal exposure to extreme weather.

In 2003, back in Tennessee, David became a licensed general contractor specializing in historical restorations and upscale renovations, including repurposing buildings into commercial retail and office space, constructing multi-family homes, and launching a high-end retail showroom for kitchen and bath remodeling.

Relocating in 2018, he shifted to developing climate-resilient construction technologies in Hawaii with his Ex Machina Group, focusing on advising and remediating at-risk coastal properties and developing climate-resilient construction technologies to protect homes against wildfire, wind, and drought and building affordable, sustainable communities.

By 2022, in collaboration with IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence, Climate Intelligence Group and a dozen other technological partners, David created an AI-driven system to evaluate climate risks and recommend mitigation strategies. Capable of performing a remote visual survey of a home then evaluate its climate risks, his Future Proof technology can recommend proactive steps the homeowner can take to mitigate the impact of our increasingly extreme weather. Consolidated in the Future Proof interactive online educational system a homeowner can simulate the impact of extreme weather on their property and tour their neighborhood through a 150-year journey of climate’s past, present and future.

David’s career and the creative collaboration he has assembled demonstrate a a significant shift from pioneering entertainment technology to advocating for climate- sustainable development and the remediation of our existing housing, impacting diverse industries and communities.