Meet the Team

With Meet The HARMAN Luxury Team, our goal is for you to get to know us better. In each edition we feature a different member of the team, and this month it's David Glaubke, Director, Global Communications for HARMAN Luxury Audio Group, HARMAN Professional Solutions and HARMAN Embedded Audio business units.

How would you describe what you do in your current role?

I oversee communications for the HARMAN Luxury Audio Group, which means managing the process for telling our brand and product stories in the media through new product launches, product reviews, tradeshows, and events.

What did you study in school? Did you always imagine yourself doing something like what you’re doing now or did the fates just take you in that direction?

When I was a little kid, I REEEALLY wanted to be a waiter at Chicago’s historic The Berghoff restaurant, mainly because they wore tuxedos and draped a white napkin over their forearm. After wanting to be an architect for ten minutes in high school (required math aptitude), I ended up going to school for journalism and then, ultimately, film – an industry I worked in for the subsequent 15 years. I did a mid-career change, which landed me in corporate communications and public relations. I will tell you that at one time in my career I fulfilled my childhood dream working as waiter, but sadly, not at The Berghoff. And not in a tuxedo. And most certainly not because I wanted to.

How did your career path lead you to HARMAN?

I spent the first 15 years of my career in motion picture production and development working on films like Home Alone 2, Natural Born Killers, I Love Trouble and in creative development at Walt Disney Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures at Warner Bros. Years later, I segued into communications when I was hired into a public relations agency that managed entertainment and technology clients. Entertainment and/or technology was the lane I stayed in, heading communications for such companies as ReachLocal, lynda.com, Demand Media and, ultimately, my three business units at HARMAN for the past almost eight years.

What is the most important thing you have learned over your career?

Nearly every job I’ve had in my entire professional career was the result of help from a relationship I cultivated. I take as much care in connecting with people that I do in doing my day-to-day job.

Any other advice you would share with people just starting out in this industry?

Never be afraid to reach out to someone you don’t know who shares your interests and would be helpful to you in your field. I believe there is an inherent interest from industry vets to mentor and pass on knowledge to a younger generation. My career change happened because of an informal informational meeting set up by a former co-worker. Jeff Rose of The Rose Group agency took a chance on me and mentored my career in communications still to this day. For that I’ll forever be grateful and will pay that forward whenever I can.

What are you most proud of in your life?

Prideful moments sometimes come at the most ordinary moments. Dinner at the Glaubkes can be a boisterous adventure of laughter, intellect, satire, and sarcasm. In small moments like these, I allow myself to relish in the family and be proud how my kids’ (late-teens, early twenties) have become unique individuals who bring so much joy to people’s lives and see it impact the things they have set out to do in life.

When did you realize you had a passion for music or audio? Was there any one band, song, or movie that did it for you?

A white van pulled up to teenager-me when I was walking home from the beach in Evanston, Illinois. Two college-age guys told me they had a “surplus” of new loudspeakers in the back and if I’d be interested in buying any. Up until that point, I was listening to my record albums on speakers what were pretty much two wood boxes of voice coils shaking torn paper pulp and crusted glue. With zero circumspection for danger, and a wet beach towel around my neck, I withdrew the $150 from the bank and those guys left me in front of my house with two brand new speakers… and they were sublime. I never heard the albums that I grew up with (Mom’s collection) as good: Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits; Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book; the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odessey. Then my newer albums: Pink Floyd’s The Wall; The Cars’ Candy-O; and Cheap Trick’s Cheap Trick at Budokan. I don’t remember what brand those stolen speakers were, but it was better than what I had.

What current technology impresses you the most?

In 1983, I was fascinated by Pink Floyd’s album The Final Cut. Not just because it was the follow-up album to The Wall, but because of the rocket sound effect on the track, “Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert,” put there by drummer Nick Mason. It was that effect that earned an album play on Chicago’s WLUP ‘The Loop’ Headphones Only show. What I didn’t know at the time, that 3D technique is called Holophonics, a binaural recording system created by Hugo Zuccarelli. That track was the second time it was ever used on a song recording.

It is perhaps for that experience that I’m impressed most with the technology advancements in spatial audio coming from brands like FLUX:: where immersive audio, true immersive audio, is being recorded, mixed, mastered and deployed for a wide variety of acoustic environments. This will be a very exciting space to watch over the next several years.

Favorite music genre?

Jazz for cooking. Rock for driving. Hard rock for driving fast. Chicago House to exercise. Indie folk/rock for writing.

The desert island question, of course. If you were marooned for eternity and could listen to only three albums, what would they be?

Oh. Don’t do this to me. Okay, randomly pulled from my deserted island record collection now hypothetically at the bottom of the ocean: Pat Metheny Group’s Travels (1983), The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall (1953), De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (1989).

You have the floor. In closing, tell us anything else you want us to know about yourself.

From high school on I’ve worked some fairly weird temporary jobs. I worked at Weiner And Still Champion selling hot dogs. I worked for Michael Jordan during his playing days. I worked for a private investigator conducting surveillances. I waited tables (bucket list, check). I zipped up the Genie costume (exclusively) for the Aladdin: Disney’s World on Ice shows. My takeaway is this: I’m on a journey where I embrace opportunities that come my way and learn as much as I can, as silly as they may be, and apply it to the next thing. I am the sum of my experiences. Then what do Chicago hot dogs have in common with luxury audio? Both have customers who are exceptionally passionate about their purchase.