David joined WAGES in the spring of 2013 as the Director of Cooperative Development, leading the development of programs that support the ongoing professional development of both co-op member-owners and the growing numbers of cooperative developers who look to WAGES for guidance.

David brings more than 20 years of experience in social justice and economic development work. A native of the Bay Area, he lived in Chicago in the 1990s, where he worked at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Center for Labor and Community Research. It was during this time that he made his first visit to the Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain and was inspired to dedicate himself to the development of worker-owned cooperatives. In 2004 he founded the TeamWorks cleaning cooperative and worked as a member-owner doing house cleaning during the first year of operations to understand the challenges of this industry from the workers’ perspective and to help get the new cooperative past its break-even point. In 2011 he was part of the team that launched the TeamWorks landscape cooperative.

As part of his preparation for cooperative leadership, David was trained as a community organizer by the San Jose-based organization PACT, an affiliate of the PICO national network. He is particularly interested in the challenge and promise of adapting popular education (in the tradition of Paulo Freire and Myles Horton et al) to the demands of successfully managing worker cooperatives.

David is a member of the board of directors of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) and is a certified peer adviser in the Democracy at Work Network (DAWN). He lives in San Jose with his wife, Kim, and daughter, Magdalena.