About AmEliz
A board and executive advisory practice founded by David Goodacre OBE FCIIS
Some careers are built in one place; mine has been built across several, in environments where the cost of getting decisions wrong is real, and where getting them right depends less on what you know and more on how you think.
I served as a British Army officer for twenty-five years, leaving as a Lieutenant Colonel. I led teams through combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, ran a multinational aviation headquarters, and directed strategy and digital transformation for a workforce of 110,000. I was awarded the OBE in 2021 for leadership in strategic transformation and public service.
After the Army, I joined Barclays as a Director within the Chief Security Office (CSO). I led a global security transformation portfolio, served as Scotland CSO Lead, and worked with executive leadership on how security, resilience and risk show up in strategic decision-making at the top of a global bank.
AmEliz is the next stage. An independent practice, founded in 2025, supporting the kind of decisions I spent twenty-five years making, and helping people make them with more confidence.
The work I've done
The shape of the experience
Three threads run through it.
Leading in environments where consequences are real. Military command teaches a particular kind of discipline: you make decisions with incomplete information, under time pressure, and you live with what happens next. That habit carries forward. At Army Aviation Headquarters I was Senior Security Accountable Executive for £84m of mission-critical assets and the personnel who operated them. I worked with international partners on the coordination of a £500m withdrawal of personnel and equipment from Afghanistan, working with allied partners through a phase where the operational stakes were high and the political stakes higher.
Operating at the boundary of public service and executive leadership. Some of the work I'm proudest of sits at that boundary. In March 2020 I volunteered to lead the military strategic planning team supporting NHS Scotland through the early months of the pandemic. I worked directly to the Director General Health and Social Care, building the reporting that informed First Ministerial decisions and supporting NHS leaders on long-term recovery planning. It taught me something about what the strongest public institutions look like and what it takes to lead inside them.
Bringing senior judgement into commercial and governance environments. At Barclays I worked on a multi-year, multi-million pound transformation programme inside one of the most heavily regulated environments in the world. I now hold a portfolio of board and trustee roles spanning a commercial hospitality business, a regional chamber of commerce, an emergency response charity, a veterans' welfare organisation, and a community impact non-profit. I'm a Chartered Manager and Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information Security, and hold the Institute of Directors' Level 9 Certificate in Company Direction with Distinction. I'm currently part way through the University of Cambridge's Cyber Leadership Accelerator Programme.
The blend of military judgement, commercial scale, board governance is what I bring to AmEliz, and what AmEliz brings to the businesses it works with.
What I believe
Cyber and AI are leadership issues, not technical ones. They are intrinsically linked to people, culture and judgement. Treating them as someone else's problem is how boards get caught out.
Boards don't need to become experts. They need to become confident; confident enough to lead the conversations, to ask the questions that matter, and to know what good looks like when they see it.
Senior counsel works best when it's quiet. The best advisory work doesn't end with a slide deck. It ends with someone making a better decision than they would have made on their own, in a room where I'm not visible.
Credentials
Qualifications
MSc Battlespace Technology (Information Systems), Cranfield University
BSc Engineering, University of the West of England
Cyber Leadership Accelerator Programme (in progress), University of Cambridge
Honours
OBE, 2021 for leadership in strategic transformation and public service.
Professional standing
Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information Security (FCIIS), the highest grade of the UK's professional body for the information security profession
IoD Level 9 Certificate in Company Direction (Distinction)
Chartered Manager, Fellow CMI
APM Practitioner (IPMA Level D)
CMI Level 5 Award in Coaching & Mentoring
Current board and advisory roles
Chair, West Lothian Chamber of Commerce
Trustee, Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance
Trustee, Officers' Association Scotland
Non-Executive Director, Performance Goal
Non-Executive Director, RSC Management Ltd
The brand story
Amelia and Elizabeth, the next generation.
“Leaving people and businesses better protected than I found them.”
I believe a nation is better defended when its leaders take ownership of the risks they face rather than deferring them to someone else. I serve by giving boards the understanding, and the confidence, to lead on cyber, AI and resilience themselves.
A note on the name
AmEliz takes its name from my two daughters, Amelia and Elizabeth, whose names are held inside the brand. The diamond mark itself is an "A" intersected with a rotated "e" the same two letters, hidden in plain sight.
The practice carries their names because the work it does is, in the end, about leaving organisations stronger than I found them. That's what I want to teach the next generation. And it starts at home.
Want to talk?
If something here resonates with where your organisation is, I'd welcome a conversation. There's no obligation and no pitch, just a chance to think out loud together.