Built From the Inside Out
David Edgerton Jr. started where most engineers start — solving problems with clear answers. A degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University gave him a framework for thinking that has never left him: define the system, identify the variables, build for what the system actually needs.
What came next wasn’t a straight line. IT. Manufacturing. Corporate diversity leadership. An MBA from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Years spent inside large organizations watching talented people build value — and watching that value disappear the moment the organization changed.
He saw people laid off after decades of loyal service with nothing portable to show for it. He watched professionals from underrepresented communities accumulate credentials that stopped producing proportional returns. He watched organizations lose their best people not because they didn’t care, but because they never gave those people a framework for building something that belonged to them.
When David founded DEJ Search in 2021 and began placing senior leaders in nonprofit and social-impact organizations, the pattern became undeniable. After 30+ placements, he had the evidence for something he’d been observing his entire career. Transferable Capital is the framework he built to name it — and to give professionals the language, the diagnostic, and the development path to build it intentionally.
TC is his life’s work. Not because it was the most obvious business to build. Because it’s the framework he wished existed earlier.
