David W. Brown

I have experienced the public world from various vantage points: as a lawyer on Wall Street; chief-of-staff on capitol Hill; state commissioner in New York; deputy mayor of New York City; public authority board member; professor at Yale and the New School; and president of Blackburn College.

I have authored four books, When Strangers Cooperate (Free Press, 1995), Organization Smarts (Amacom, 2002); The Real Change-Makers (Praeger, 2012); and America's Culture of Professionalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 20140. I have also co-edited two more, Agent of Democracy and A Different Kind of Politics (Kettering Foundation Press, 2008 and 2009). Currently, I serve as the ongoing co-editor of the Higher Education Exchange, an annual publication of the Kettering Foundation.

All of my work is centered on the social dimensions of problem solving. My most recent work, America's Culture of Professionalism, is a critical examination of such a culture, past, present and prospects, and argues for a culture change with knowledge treated as social process, problem-solving as people-based, and professionals nurturing the capacities of those they serve rather than prolonging their dependence.