By Felicia Ho ’19
This fall, Mr. David Rushforth joins the Pingry community to teach the Financial Literacy curriculum. Outside of the classroom, he coaches the Upper School Boys’ third Soccer team and the Middle School Girls’ Tennis teams. He also advises the Credit Union Team, the Entrepreneurship Club, and the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). Previously, Mr. Rushforth worked as a financial analyst in Fixed Income Asset Management for fifteen years, mostly at Prudential. During his time there, he was also able to spend time on the Money Market, Global/FX, Municipal Bond, and Mortgage trading desks. Most recently, he spent two years teaching as a substitute in the Bernards Township School District.
Mr. Rushforth first became interested in finance after watching how his parents reacted to and handled their family economics during the “Black Friday” stock market crash of 1989. In college, even though he was a declared History major, he found that he was enjoying many of the economics and business classes that he had originally chosen to take just for fun. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College with a B.A. in History, but later pursued business by graduating with a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Rutgers Business School. After his then to-be wife moved to New Jersey, “everything fell into place with a job in finance.”
After spending several years in Prudential, Mr. Rushforth began to realize his love for teaching—a love that he had since his high school years. In fact, when he was asked to help in developing and implementing a training program for new associates at Prudential, he became one of the main mentors. It was in this experience that the “teaching ‘fire’ was re-started in earnest.” Soon after, he began to seriously consider and reflect on his dreams of becoming a teacher.
In his transition to teaching, Mr. Rushforth attended Bergen Community College and completed the New Pathways to Teaching program. Afterwards, he began to substitute for teachers in the Bernards Township School District.
At Pingry, he loves to see students take initiative in making their own learning experiences as innovating and interesting as possible. He appreciates how Pingry encourages its students to go beyond the classroom to grow into exceptional leaders and citizens of the world. In reflecting upon his first few weeks at Pingry, he described it as a “whirlwind, but from the first time I walked through the front doors for an interview back in late August, I felt right at home.”
Outside of Pingry, he is a member of the Oak Street School Parents Leadership Committee, helping to develop and implement programs for students and parents that emphasize the value of leadership, and a chair of the school’s Roald Dahl Day. He loves cooking and being outdoors, whether through fishing, hiking, or biking. He is also a USA Swimming official at the Berkeley Aquatic Club, where his daughter swims. Having been raised in Plymouth, Massachusetts where he worked as a pilgrim at the Plantation as a kid, he is an avid New England sports fan.
Mr. Rushforth is excited to be joining the Pingry community, and would like to share his favorite question with students: What would you do If You Knew You Could Not Fail?.