David Fairman has facilitated consensus building and mediated resolution of complex public and organizational disputes on economic development and human service programs and projects, environmental and land use planning and regulation, and violent intergroup conflicts. Recent and current projects include facilitation of a back-channel political dialogue on options for a political settlement to resolve a Moslem insurgency in the southern Philippines; a global review of the environmental and social policies of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation; consensus building on health and housing policies for ex-offenders re-entering their communities across the U.S.; and facilitation of U.S. national policy dialogues on the future of public housing programs and national energy policy.
Dr. Fairman has taught negotiation, consensus building and mediation skills for organizational leaders and staff through the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and through national and international organizations including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the Sustainability Challenge Foundation, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Capital One, and the American Cancer Society, among many others. He has researched and written numerous academic publications, consulting reports and simulations on negotiation and public consensus building.
Dr. Fairman has been with CBI since 1997. Prior to his work with CBI, Dr. Fairman was a facilitator and trainer in private practice, and a mediator with Endispute, Inc., one of the first private conflict resolution organizations in the U.S. He has been a professional in the field since 1989.
He is a senior mediator on the rosters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. He serves on the membership committee of the Alliance for International Conflict Prevention and Resolution, where he was a founding Board member, and he is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Fairman holds a BA from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in political science from MIT.
