David Boudreau believes in embracing the journey of life and experiencing the world around him. It’s a mindset that has guided the Mercer University alumnus through a successful career in the financial industry and helped him go the distance as an endurance swimmer.
A 1980 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences graduate, Boudreau lives in Coral Gables, Florida, and serves on the college’s Alumni Advisory Board.
Originally from Daytona Beach, Florida, he considered Mercer for his undergraduate studies at the suggestion of his high school guidance counselor. He already had some familiarity with Macon since his mother had attended Wesleyan College, and he had family who lived in nearby Atlanta.
After a weekend touring Mercer, he realized he preferred the smaller-school feel over larger university campuses and enrolled after securing a scholarship. Boudreau said English was his worst subject in high school. He was more of a “math and science guy” and started his Mercer classes intending to major in a related field. But his professors and classes expanded his horizons, and he ended up earning an English degree.
“Mercer was the first time in my life where I kind of got to a place where I thought, ‘I can do this. I can challenge myself. I can compete intellectually and academically,’” Boudreau said. “I remember really getting interested in things. I couldn’t get enough. It wasn’t just English. I really enjoyed all of it. I’d never been in that environment.”
He had been told what to think in high school, but at Mercer, he learned how to think for himself.
“I have been so very fortunate, and for me, (Mercer) was like the starting gate. That’s why I keep going back,” said Boudreau, who returns to the Macon campus twice a year for CLAS Alumni Advisory Board meetings. “I have such an unbelievably fond memory of the place and the whole experience, and I have a lot of interest and energy in trying to do what I can for those who are there and have yet to get there.”
After graduating, he returned to Daytona Beach because he missed living by the ocean. He had grown up swimming competitively and spent a year working on the beach and on motorcycles before joining the family business of a fraternity brother in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. When the company encountered some financial challenges, he began working with its accountants and discovered an aptitude for numbers and accounting.
This led him back to school to earn an accounting degree and to a job with an accounting firm, where a small client named Jan Bell Marketing, now known as Mayor’s Jewelers, was one of the companies he worked with. Six months in, Jan Bell skyrocketed to success and went public. Boudreau became Jan Bell’s full-time controller and treasurer and chief financial officer several years later, a position he held until 2002 when the company was sold.
Boudreau joined Richline Group as chief operating officer that same year and served in that role for more than a decade, traveling the world to complete 27 acquisitions. After some time with a family office investment firm and a hospitality group, he began doing consulting work following the COVID-19 pandemic and officially retired this summer.
Throughout his career and today, a constant in Boudreau’s life has been endurance swimming. He was hooked after doing well in his first open water race in Boca Raton, Florida, in 1993 and joining a relay race team for a swim around Key West, Florida, in 1994.
“I had learned how to swim first in the ocean. One thing led to another., I started pushing myself and doing longer swims,” he said.
For two decades, Boudreau competed in several events each year, including numerous races in Florida. Competitions took him to California, New York, the Cayman Islands, St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and England. He earned a number of age group awards, but he considers his most unique swimming accomplishment to be first-place American swimmer in the 20 Bridges Swim Around Manhattan race in 1997.
Today, Boudreau still swims four or five days a week with the Hurricane Aquatics program at the University of Miami and and usually signs up for one or two open water marathon competitions each year. He passed on his love of swimming to his two children and four grandchildren, all of whom live in Florida. Even amid his travels over the years, he has always found a pool or an ocean to swim in.
“I’ve always loved being in the water. It’s my quiet time,” he said. “I’ve always thought to myself and told my kids you want to develop a lifestyle that’s healthy, and the best way is to find something you really enjoy. What I’ve found also is having part of your lifestyle like that allows you to cope with the other things a little better. It’s the physical part too. You just feel better.”
Boudreau tries to approach life in the same way he does his swimming, with a focus on moving forward and making the most of the journey rather than on the medals and accolades.
“I just feel like there’s so much world out there, and there’s so little time out there to live it. There’s so much stuff to see, do, experience,” he said. “It’s the journey more so in the end. I’m as proud of that as anything, the way (my children) approach the world. They have that similar energy and spirit.”
