David Westgate

Mr. David Westgate is a seasoned executive officer, with an impressive record of success in corporate leadership roles and experience in leading global teams.  He has deep expertise in handling challenging situations, driving transformation from restructuring through the growth stage with an understanding of the levers that result in sustainable value creation. 

Mr. Westgate has a bias for action, understands the value in empowering a highly diverse team, brings a focus on innovation, and operates with transparency and candor.

Since 2018, Mr. Westgate has been Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Carestream Health, one of the top global providers of digital radiography (DR) and computed radiography (CR) systems with more than 4,000 employees selling into 150 countries.  In this role, he has:

• emphasized the value of listening to customers and supported a creative culture that produces innovative solutions to meet customers ongoing needs, significantly expanding the company’s range of products and services
• developed a diverse, accomplished executive leadership team and reward system to support a customer-focused, results-oriented culture that executes and keep commitments
• implemented structural changes to organization to eliminate bureaucracy, empower decision making and focus on voice of the customer
• executed cost reduction activities that generated $260M in savings
• increased velocity and focus on R&D team resulting in 50% reduction in development time generating new products resulting in $60 million of incremental revenue annually

Before joining Carestream, Mr. Westgate was Chief Executive Officer of Jason Industries, Inc. a NASDAQ-traded, global diversified manufacturing company operating in three segments: industrial, seating, and automotive.  While Mr. Westgate was CEO, he led successful efforts to diversify the company’s portfolio, emphasizing a culture of growth and innovation. Under his leadership, Jason Industries experienced significant increases in revenue and earnings, and accelerated growth through acquisitions, geographic diversification, performance improvements and developing breakthrough innovations.  He initiated Jason’s going-public effort, which resulted in the company being NASDAQ-listed on July 1, 2014.  While at Jason Industries, Mr. Westgate’s specific accomplishments included:

• a successful private equity exit with a 5.5x cash-on-cash return
• a reduction in working capital by 20% through lean implementation and “cash” focus
• the integration of twelve acquisitions without incremental equity, expanding portfolio into new markets
• an accelerated implementation of SOX, SEC reporting, investor relations and public company governance

Previously, Mr. Westgate served as President and Chief Executive Officer – Business Group Americas at Rieter Automotive Systems, one of the leading global suppliers of systems solutions in noise control and thermal management, as well as interior trim, for the automotive industry.  He also spent 14 years at Solvay Automotive, Inc., where he held positions of increasing responsibility, ultimately serving as President and Chief Executive Officer from 1997 until 2001.

Mr. Westgate received an MBA, with honors, from the University of Notre Dame.