David Fairman

David Fairman is Managing Director at the Consensus Building Institute and Associate Director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program. He designs and facilitates consensus building processes, coaches and trains leaders to enhance their negotiation and collaboration skills, and researches and teaches the application of negotiation and consensus building tools to challenging public issues.

David applies his skills in several practice areas. In the private sector, he works with business leaders and senior staff to revision structural conflicts as creative partnerships. Internationally, he works with multilateral development agencies, governments, and other national partners to institutionalize collaborative approaches to planning, policy and project decision-making.

In the U.S., he helps stakeholders craft policies and strategies in the domains of national security, energy and environmental policy, low-income housing, criminal justice and child welfare.

A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, David is Senior Mediator on the rosters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. He is also a founding board member of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, founding Director of CBI’s Workable Peace program, member of the Advisory Board for the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution.

He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT and a B.A. from Harvard College.