David Grisham leads client relationships across MSA’s Nashville and Austin markets, bringing nearly two decades of architectural, project leadership, and business experience to the role. With experience across multifamily, commercial, hospitality, institutional, and single-family residential work, he helps bring MSA’s design services to developers, operators, and institutional clients in two of the country’s fastest-growing markets, connecting them with the right people and design talent across the firm’s three offices.

As an architect, David understands first-hand what clients need from their design team. Throughout his career, he has led projects from concept through construction, managed multidisciplinary teams, developed client relationships, and built and operated a successful architectural product business. Those experiences have given him an appreciation for design from both sides of the table: not only how a project comes together, but how business decisions, operations, craftsmanship, and relationships influence its success

Born in California and raised in Alabama, David has spent most of his career in Nashville, Tenn., where he has built trusted client relationships through his design expertise and deep knowledge of these growing urban markets. He believes the best projects start with understanding a community first — how people move through a place, gather in it, and call it home — and he carries that same attention down to the smallest details, knowing how a single material or connection can shape the way a building comes together and how a space ultimately feels.

Throughout his career, David has come to value collaboration and local business as much as design itself. He believes the best architecture is a team effort shaped alongside clients, consultants, builders, and the local makers and trades who bring a project to life. He works to build those partnerships wherever he goes. Hands-on by nature and happiest outdoors or working with his hands, he brings a deep respect for craft to every scale of design.