David Nagel is an American manager. He held executive positions in a wide variety of technology companies and organizations.

From 1972 to 1988, Nagel was at NASA, culminating as head of human factors research. He was co-editor of the 1988 book Human Factors in Aviation.^[3] He then joined Apple, where he was senior vice president leading the worldwide research and development group responsible for Mac OS software, especially the Copland project,^[4] Macintosh hardware, imaging and other peripheral products development. He resigned from Apple and joined AT&T in April, 1996,^[5] staying there for five years. Nagel was the chief technology officer at AT&T and president of AT&T Labs. In 2001, he joined Palm, first as a member of the Palm Board of Directors and then as the first CEO of PalmSource. Since 2005 he has remained active in the technology industry as a director of several companies and as a venture capital investor.^[6]

• Member, National Research Council Study Group on IT R&D Infrastructure
• Member, Board of Directors, Liberate, Inc.
• Member, Board of Directors, Arcsoft
• Member, Board of Trustees, UCLA Foundation
• Emeritus Member, Board of the Tech Museum in San Jose, California
• Member, President Clinton's first Advisory Committee on High Performance Computing, Communication, and the Next Generation Internet, 1997
• Member, Federal Communications Commission's Technological Advisory Council, 1999