David Fairman is Managing Director of the Consensus Building Institute and Associate Director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program. He leads CBI as a whole, and directs CBI’s International Development practice. Over the past twenty years, he has facilitated policy dialogue and regulatory negotiations on US national security, public education, energy and environment, criminal justice, and public housing. Internationally, he has facilitated national transition planning in post-conflict countries; mediated negotiations between major oil companies and communities impacted by their operations on benefit sharing and impact mitigation; and built national capacity for collaboration on natural resource management in more than twenty countries.

David serves on the Board of the Sustainability Challenge Foundation. He was a founding Board member of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. He is a Senior Mediator on the roster of the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT and a B.A. from Harvard College.