Pursuing Ideals & Promoting Ideas
An Academic’s Quest to Create a Better World

Dave descends from a prominent, well-to-do family in Massachusetts; both of his parents descended from a long line of highly regarded Boston Brahmins. He can also track his family back to John Dixwell, one of the judges who sentenced England’s King Charles I to death in 1649 for betraying the people. Perhaps having inherited some of Dixwell’s rebellious nature, Dave decided that he would strike a different path from his father and grandfathers, who had sought highly lucrative careers. Heeding President John F. Kennedy’s calls to public service, he joined the second wave of Peace Corps volunteers headed to Ethiopia and learned the difficulties faced by oppressed communities and the myriad challenges in helping them. Later, armed with a law degree and a PhD in organizational behavior, he brought together diverse communities in Cleveland to seek a way to resolve disputes and help the city recover after it defaulted on federal loans. But he spent the bulk of his career working with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) around the world to better serve the poor and oppressed. He and close colleagues even worked with the World Bank to develop international standards to ensure nonprofits and NGOs are held accountable for how they spend money. And as a Boston University and Harvard professor, he worked to educate hundreds of nonprofit and NGO leaders. An intellectual prone to deep thought, Dave doesn’t talk about himself. But through a series of interviews and gentle yet persistent questioning, we got his story.