# S01E16 · Transcript — King David Banksworth Full transcript of [The Useful Podcast](https://useful.ventures/podcast) Episode 16, a founder-to-founder conversation between host Gokul Bala and King David Banksworth, a Nigerian-Canadian nurse and MBA candidate working on a thesis about acquiring healthcare companies. Back to the [episode page](https://useful.ventures/podcast/king-david-banksworth-healthcare). This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Filler words and false starts have been removed and the meaning has been preserved. Any errors are mine, not David's. ## Lagos, discipline, and an ecstatic move to Canada **Gokul** I want to start with David as a person — where did you grow up, and what was it like around you? **David** My name is Ola Dikpupo. I'm Nigerian, born in Lagos State, and I lived there until I was nine, when we immigrated to Canada. Nigeria is a rich country with a lot of poverty too, but my family was educated — my dad worked for large corporations — and by Canadian standards we were upper middle class. Private school, sports, tutors, nannies, chefs. I remember it as fun and dynamic, but also scary — the educational system there can be very fear-based. If you didn't do your homework, you got the ruler to the hand; if you didn't listen, you'd stand at the front of the class in a painful squat. I didn't like it. I remember being so ecstatic when I got the news we were moving to Canada. **Gokul** Do you think that had a positive or negative effect on you growing up? **David** A little negative, honestly. I think school became a place you have to perform, not a place to learn — and I don't think learning should be a fearful experience. But the discipline itself — the self-discipline — I don't think that actually came from the school system. It came from my family dynamic, both in Nigeria and after we moved. The fear of school is one thing; the discipline is something my parents instilled separately. **Gokul** How did the move itself change things? **David** Any immigrant will tell you it's a difficult transition. My parents had prominent jobs back home and came to Canada to work different types of jobs that paid a lot less, which put pressure on the family. We were expected to grow up fast. That dynamic — never quite enough, parents always working — shaped how I view myself, discipline, and family more than either school system did. ## Big D, and the parent-approved path into nursing **Gokul** When did you know you wanted to go into healthcare? **David** Around grade nine or ten I became very aware of my body — I'd always been a bigger kid, and it affected me. I decided to change it: I'd wake up at 5 a.m., buy a skipping rope, do running drills in the basement, blast music, and just train. By high school I was known as "Big D" because bodybuilding was all I lived for. That mindset — counting food, training, discipline — sparked something that became real interest in health, though at the time it was purely physical. On the healthcare-systems side, my parents wanted me to be a doctor, engineer, or lawyer — pretty common for immigrant families who want stability. I didn't have the grades for any of those in high school, so I went looking for something that still counted as healthcare to them. That's how I found nursing. I didn't even know what it was at first, but I had the right subjects to get in, and it looked like a path that could still lead to becoming a doctor later. So nursing became my way of proving to my parents that I could be something. ## From hospital nursing to fly-in Indigenous communities **Gokul** You didn't stay in regular nursing — you went into travel nursing, and then into remote Indigenous communities, sometimes as close to the only healthcare presence there is. How did that shift happen? **David** There's a moment I remember clearly from a community health class in university. A guest speaker had done healthcare work in Tanzania — project coordination, not frontline nursing — and at the time I was having an identity crisis about being Canadian-Nigerian and really wanted to travel. I went up to her afterward and said I wanted to go provide healthcare in Africa, because our healthcare system wasn't working — people were still dying from things like polio, from dirty water. It blew my mind that I lived somewhere so privileged while people elsewhere died from stupid, preventable causes. She told me: that's great, but we have our own problem right here. If you have an interest in Indigenous communities, there are remote communities in Canada — the North, Nunavut — that don't have basic things like drinking water. I hadn't known the depth of that problem. She told me to start there. During my nursing consolidation, in the cardiac unit, I kept asking my preceptor how to get up north. She told me flatly: you can't yet, you need real nursing experience, because sometimes you're one of very few people there, completely isolated, and a new grad doesn't have the judgment for that. She was right. Most people who work up north are emergency or ICU nurses first. My path there was roundabout. I worked as a travel-health consultant at a private clinic, Passport Health — giving people vaccines and health teaching before international trips. Then, right out of school in 2020, I took a public-health nursing job in Thunder Bay during COVID, through an agency — my first taste of nursing that wasn't hospital-bound and paid comparably. I quit a job as a travel consultant on a Friday and moved to Thunder Bay by Monday to work long-term care for a year through the same kind of agency arrangement. Around then I met a nurse who'd worked with Nursing Without Borders in Sudan, and she was also on the roster for Indigenous Services. She helped me get onto their vaccination program roster, and once I got bored of long-term care, I called and asked if there was another opportunity. That's how I ended up doing what I'd originally wanted — learning how you actually build healthy communities, which turned out to be a lot more complicated in reality than the idealistic picture I had going in. ## What a broken wrist costs in Bearskin Lake **Gokul** What's something about that work that you think people in more privileged parts of the country simply can't understand? **David** Access to specialists at any time. Most people don't think about needing to fly somewhere just to see an eye doctor — you go to the mall. In the communities I work in, the optometrist might come twice a year. And it's expensive: a lot of people are on government support and can't just buy a flight. I'm currently in a place called Bearskin Lake, and getting to Sioux Lookout is about an hour flight that costs roughly $2,000 round trip. Non-Insured Health Benefits — NIHB — covers flights, food, and accommodation for people with a status number and a band number, but the logistics are still brutal. I had a patient recently — a kid who fractured her wrist on the monkey bars. We needed an X-ray, but the only two people in the community who can do X-rays were both away. So we had to fly her out to get one. Then, luckily, our X-ray technician came back the day before her flight, so I had to cancel it — she got her X-ray locally instead. But then we found out the fracture needed to be reduced, which meant she had to fly out again anyway, to get the reduction done properly. That's a simple procedure turning into days of coordination and multiple flight bookings. Food is a related problem — everything's frozen because it has to be freighted in, so fresh fruit and vegetables are scarce, and something like running out of milk can mean waiting until next week's freight. ## From caregiver to would-be healthcare investor **Gokul** You went from being a frontline caregiver to wanting to be a healthcare systems innovator — even a venture capitalist, judging startups. What changed? **David** It stems from an existential crisis I had in university, when I really couldn't believe the world operated the way it does. Coming out of that, I started asking a more selfish question first: how do I build a life I actually want to live — the time, the financial freedom, the autonomy to do what I want in this world? And I landed on: healthcare in general is lucrative. If you need a specific surgery, you need it — there's no competing on price the way there is with clothing. It felt a little evil, preying on people's health for money, but that's how the world operates, so I decided I had to join the game rather than stay outside it. **Gokul** Is that what led you to Queen's? **David** Originally I joined Queen's to pursue a nurse practitioner credential, which requires a master's degree. I'd also always known I wanted to do business and build my own clinic, focused on wellness and longevity, but I didn't know how to get there. An MBA had been in the back of my mind for a while, and I found Queen's MMIE program somewhat by chance while looking at master's options. I didn't expect it to be as transformative as it was — it gave me a plethora of resources, knowledge, and introductions I didn't anticipate, and that's where my thinking really started to shift from "I need a clinical credential" toward the acquisitions thesis I'm working on now. ## VCIC, and thinking like an investor **Gokul** You and your team won regionals at VCIC at St. Mary's and went on to the global finals at UNC — going from nurse, to someone who's seen the system's uglier side, to judging startups as a venture capitalist. How did that shift your mindset? **David** It's part of a progression. I feel like I've built up a broad view of what's out there, and now I want actual impact. My thesis is on acquisition — acquiring healthcare companies. It's interesting because my whole story has been building toward it: you need the clinical knowledge and the business acumen. VCIC helped a lot with that second half, because the amount of due diligence you have to do is significant — you have to think like an investor. What's the return here? Are you working in the business, or on it? Do you actually want a job, or do you want to run an operation? Nursing, the travel clinic, VCIC, the MMIE program — it's all been leading up to where I am now, and it was only in reflecting on this conversation that I really saw how directly each piece connects to the next. ## Why he thinks it's fair to say the system runs on capital **Gokul** You've said something close to "the world is evil, so I have to join the game." Is that really where you land? **David** That's my blunt truth about it. Healthcare in the US, for example, is a money-making machine, because it's a necessity, not a choice — you can't shop around the way you can for clothes. I don't want to sound too negative, but I think I have to join the game somehow, and it's not fair, but that's the reality. What I'd add is: if the system runs on capital, then the people who actually want it to work differently need to own some of that capital. That's less cynical than it sounds — it's specific. You don't fix a capital-driven system from entirely outside of it. ## What school taught him, and what he actually wants **Gokul** Last question — when you eventually retire, what do you want to be known for? **David** Not really a legacy in the traditional sense. What I want is for people to really live fully as human beings — to have the full human experience. To love authentically, to have meaningful friendships, to enjoy nature and family in whatever form that takes, to be part of a community that protects you, and to do whatever you feel is right in the world — whether that's traveling, cooking, sewing, or building a company — in a way that adds value. Money is secondary to me; it mostly just enables those things. I think it comes down to something almost as simple as Shakespeare's "to be or not to be" — except it's not about being alive or not, it's about whether you choose to be human: to experience, to love, to show kindness, or not. I don't think we're as separate as we act like we are. We share a base human nature, and even when we don't agree, we can share the space together. **Gokul** I really appreciate you sharing all of this. **David** Thank you. I've never actually shared my story like that out loud before — it's strange saying it, since it's usually just in your head. --- Back to the [episode page](https://useful.ventures/podcast/king-david-banksworth-healthcare) · [[podcast|All episodes]]