Father, Husband, Leader, Friend, Mentor, Coach and Inspirator 1976 – 2020
In my years as a Qlik Fanatic I met David about 8-9 years ago, while I was working for the governmental organization UWV in Amsterdam. We met and talked about the usage of Qlik within UWV, how we were using the Qlik products, and how he thought we could grow further in using data and analytics to our advantage. From the first moment on, we were connected though our “passion of grey”.
From the moment I left UWV and started working in the commercial field, we discussed healthcare a lot and how we could help to improve patient out-come and so on. David asked me to come on stage in 2015 in Orlando USA to present about the fantastic solution “Call to Balloon”. This was my first presentation ever in English, my first presentation about this subject and he guided me through these nerve breaking moments. Just by coaching me, helping me to be at peace and helping me to tell the (data) story.
The second presentation was a year later. We were working with more and more healthcare data and David got excited about the GP and GP Post solutions we made, and the progress with some other innovative stuff. He was always present with a listening ear, with tips and tricks on how to progress. Always with the same passion and the same guidance to help me to become better and better. Me and my colleagues flew (with my former employer) to London to show him what we developed, what our thoughts were and he was so enthusiastic. Unbelievably supporting and helpful. We presented together on stage again, this time for an audience of more than 300 people. “Stay calm, don’t be nervous, breath in and out, Angelika you can do this!”, I can still hear him say. And we smashed it, one of the best presentations ever!
And so we continued our relationship with presentations, discussions, coaching and discussing our concepts, ideas etc.. I remember the moment when our mutual friend Joe Warbington became Director of Healthcare USA at Qlik. Just before our session David just said: “Joe you are the Director now, you do this presentation with Angelika, you can do this!” Always positive and motivating, getting the best out of you and help you by guiding. I can go on and on and on… about our conversations, about our ideas etc.
About 4 weeks ago David and I had a meeting. He just started at Draper and Dash, a fantastic company, and David talked about his time at home when he left Qlik in March earlier this year. How he spend time with his family and how happy he was about that. He showed me the fantastic solutions that he was working on at Draper and Dash, and I was truly blown away.
I asked him if we could do an interview with him for our Data Literacy Geek platform, together with my fellow Data Literacy Geek Boris Michel, as the first guest. The idea was to talk about Data Literacy within and for Healthcare. He immediately accepted the invite and we had a fantastic chat last week (on the 6th of October) and we published the recording on our website www.dataliteracygeek.com on the 7th of October. He (and we) were so super excited and really impressed about the methods that they had developed, and how healthcare organizations all over the world can benefit from that. Last Friday (the 9th of October), we were chatting via WhatsApp and, David showed me in a screenshot the number of views the related LinkedIn post with his recording had, and how happy he was with that!
And now, the terrible news came … again blown away, but in a totally different manner…. What a loss, devastating and so terribly sad!
David, thank you for being my friend, my mentor, my inspirator! I will never ever forget you and I will cherish the moments that we had! Thank you for being a part of my life, help me grow in the commercial world and being there whenever I had a question or a problem to solve. I (and I know with me loads of others) will carry your legacy and will pursue in doing the best for healthcare!
My deepest condolences to his family, relatives and friends.
Angelika Klidas
Operations Manager at Bitmetric BV
UPDATE 19.10.2020: If you feel like supporting the David Bolton Memorial Fund, please find the Gofundme here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/david-bolton-memorial-fund