David J. Fike, the seventh president of Golden Gate University, is an economist specializing in capital markets and urban economic development. Since taking the helm at Golden Gate University in late 2015, he has worked with faculty and staff to continue the 123-year-old university’s tradition of innovation in serving working professionals. Dr. Fike is leading initiatives that realign GGU’s programs and delivery modalities to meet the rapidly changing expectations of higher education providers locally, nationally, and globally.

Prior to GGU, Dr. Fike served as president of Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan where he mobilized the campus community to refocus the mission of this 90-year-old liberal arts college around the idea of urban leadership. The resulting program, Building Our Leadership in Detroit (BOLD), helped position the campus as an anchor for attracting and training young urban leaders from Detroit and beyond.

From 1997 until 2005, he was the chief academic officer and the dean of faculty at Holy Names University in Oakland, California. He joined Holy Names in 1992 as a faculty member in economics.

Dr. Fike has provided consulting services and research in economic revitalization, sustainable community development practices, and capital access in underserved markets to many governmental and nonprofit institutions including the City of Oakland and the Community Bank of the Bay, the first de novo community development bank in the western United States.

President Fike has been a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow and the recipient of teaching awards from the University of Maryland and Holy Names University. He has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park.