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David Naber '08
United States
After a devastating injury crushed his pro-baseball dreams, David Naber decided to pursue his other passion — international business.


David Naber '08

When he was young, David Naber ’08 dreamed of being a professional baseball player.

As a member of Arizona State University’s baseball team his sophomore year, he was well on his way to achieving that goal. Fate, however, threw the Arizona native a curve ball he wasn’t expecting.

“I got hurt in practice and a week later was called into the coach’s office where I was cut on the spot,” recalls Naber of the torn hamstring that ended his hopes of a professional baseball career. “He basically told me, ‘go do something else with your life.’”

Although devastated, Naber heeded his coach’s advice. The very next day, he was standing in ASU’s Office of Study Abroad Programs, persuading the director to allow him into the last available slot that would take him to study in Mexico.

Interested in the Spanish language since he was in grade school, Naber couldn’t deny a curiosity and pull toward other cultures. “There was always an internal struggle,” he admits, looking back. “I played baseball my whole life and wanted to be a big league player, but I also had so many other interests. Before my injury, I just couldn’t give up that dream and stop baseball so that I could live overseas.”

The torn muscle changed his career course, though, giving Naber what he considers a chance of a lifetime. “Living and studying in Mexico opened my eyes to a whole new world out there,” he says. Since then, he has never looked back, having since traveled through Europe, India, Mexico and China.

He’s also climbed the career ladder within Black & Decker, showing his business sense early on, where he helped develop a corporate-wide Hispanic marketing program. He then catapulted to a regional sales manager position, responsible for a team of 30 across four different states with regional sales of approximately $90 million.

“I really liked what I was doing in marketing and sales,” says Naber of his thought process when shopping for an MBA program. “And I didn’t want to leave Black & Decker.” Thunderbird’s Global MBA On-Demand program, he says, allowed him to have the best of both worlds – a top-rated distance learning program focused on global business and his career.

Then, once again, fate stepped in with a new opportunity just as Naber was ready to graduate from Thunderbird: a chance to manage the marketing for Black & Decker’s Kwikset brand of locks for Home Depot, their largest customer across the globe.

Thunderbird, Naber says, prepared him for the transition, instilling a level of business confidence as he interacts with the company’s manufacturing plants in Mexico and China, serves various project management roles and works daily with the company’s financials.

“The simple fact is that if you’re doing business in America – especially in a Fortune 300 company – you are going to have to deal with different cultures in different time zones, in different parts of the world.”

And even though he’s not on the baseball field he dreamed of during his youth, Naber says he wouldn’t have it any other way.

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