Meet the Team

David Lombardino started his career in 2001 as an editor for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where he mastered the knowledge and skills needed to edit a broad range of documents. He returned to the U.S. in 2008 to found a premier provider of high-quality document editing, critique, consultation and proofreading services, and thus began DLA Editors & Proofers.

Empowering Others to Use Their Voice

David was born in Houston, Texas, and has lived in St. Louis, Paris, Brazil and Buenos Aires. In St. Louis, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Mathematics with a minor in English literature from Washington University. At UNESCO headquarters in Paris, his colleagues came from all over the globe. In rural Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, in a small village with no running water, he assisted on a two-month sanitation project to build brick-and-mortar outhouses with brick-lined septic tanks. And in Buenos Aires, he studied Argentine literature, including the aguafuertes of Roberto Arlt and the poetry of Jorge Luis Borges.

Empowering Candidates Through Their Personal Statements

Through these experiences, David developed his passion for empowering others to use their voice. This was the approach he took when friends began asking him to help them with their personal statements, while he was still working for UNESCO. There was one friend in particular, applying for medical residency in the United States, who had almost everything going against her.

She was an international medical graduate from Venezuela, with more than two years since she had graduated from medical school, no US clinical experience, almost two years since her last clinical experience (she had moved to the US to study for and pass the USMLE tests), and an F1 visa that would run out as soon as she stopped taking test-preparation classes at Kaplan. The approach that David took was to guide her in being proud of her accomplishments while also accepting—but not apologizing for—her shortcomings, or red flags. With his guidance, she wrote an outstanding personal statement and compelling ERAS application, and she was able to obtain a PGY1 position in OB-GYN, which was her specialty.

Empowering Organizations Through Their Brands

This same approach is the one David took with a leading maker of touchscreens for service and retail environments. Despite the exciting innovations they continually brought to the market, they felt their voice had gone stale and needed a new direction. David started with their press releases, showing them ways to express the boldness of their technology through the bold innovative use of language. If they wanted to brand themselves as pioneers in their market, the first step was to pioneer a fresh voice for their corporate communications.

Empowering Script Writers Through Their Screenplays

When it comes to authors, no medium is more reliant on the writer's ability to master the use of voice than the screenplay. David sees this in all the screenplays he edits—that the strength of each character's voice, from believability to engagement, no matter how different from each other, can be no greater than the strength of the author's voice behind it. It is this perspective David employs to transform our clients' characters to take on lives of their own, and the one David teaches to all our editors at DLA Editors & Proofers.