Dave Hodgson
CEO/Founder at Paladin Corporation
Dave grew up in Africa during the turbulent ’60s and ’70s. He was conscripted into the Rhodesian Army and joined the SAS. He fought behind enemy lines against two armies, across three countries, for four years. Thereafter, Dave joined the highly secretive Selous Scouts and fought undercover with that unit and served as a Tracking and Survival Instructor for a further four years. He left the Special Forces and fought as a mercenary for two years. Forced to leave Zimbabwe and stateless, Dave became a commercial saturation diver in the oil fields of South East Asia and Japan.
Eventually he immigrated to Australia, where he came to know the Lord Jesus during an amazing encounter with the Lord at a Reinhart Bonnke crusade.
Dave is the Founder and Managing Director of the Australian based Paladin Group of Companies, now valued in excess of $1.2 billion. Paladin has interests in Mining, Energy, Telco Construction, IT, Health and Fitness, and Investment Banking, and has businesses in 9 countries.
In 2007, Dave founded Kingdom Investors, a marketplace ministry which has spread around Australia and Overseas. KI is using its vast marketplace experience to teach Christian businesspeople to multiply their incomes and their influence to be part of a strategic vision to create the world’s first “Sheep Nations”, as portrayed by Jesus in Matthew 25.Dave is a sought-after speaker whose lectures are presented at conferences, seminars, business groups, churches, universities, radio, television, and at economic summits all over the world. Dave teaches how he learnt to do, God’s will and God’s way, which resulted in a meteoric rise from having no assets and $76,000 worth of credit card debt, to owning a $100 million business in two years and seven months. In 2020, Dave delivered 144 lectures on 6 continents.
Dave has been married to Merlene for 37 years, they have five adult “children”, nine grandchildren, and one great granddaughter. Dave has attended Empower Church on the Sunshine Coast in Australia for over 19 years.
