David Campt’s life has always been deeply affected by the racial divides in America.

At age 5, he hid under his bed when tanks rolled through his neighborhood in response to the riots in Detroit. The riots killed 43 people and injured 1189. After the riots, his parents moved to an area of the city that had very few black families. As a young child, he was harassed by other youth who perceived him as an interloper in their territory.

In the ensuring years, his neighborhood rapidly changed, and became half black by the time he was in junior high school. During that time, he was physically assaulted by black students who perceived him has excessively studious. At a teacher’s suggestion, his parents placed him in the best private high school in the Detroit area that had not fled to the suburbs. His 3.9 average made him the top black student in his class, 8th overall, and earned him a full scholarship in computer science to Princeton University.

In college, he and other black students were frequently questioned by their white counterparts about whether they attained admission based on qualifications or for other reasons. David went on to become an editor with a prestigious computer magazine. Even after attaining a position as an editor with a computer magazine, he was frequently met with skepticism about his qualifications for this position.

After a few years rising up the ladder at his publishing company, David left the corporate fast track in pursuit of getting a better understanding of racial divides in modern societies. When he informed his professors that he wanted to study in impact of race and culture on public policy, his public policy professors fundamentally challenged this line of inquiry “How might race and culture relate to public policy?” they asked. In 1997, David graduated as the first African-American male doctoral recipient from the City and Regional Planning Department at UC Berkeley. His dissertation focused on cultural competency, which concerns the way that institutions can adapt their behavior to meet needs of diverse client populations.

When he left Berkeley, David moved to Washington DC to be become a senior policy advisor the President Clinton’s Initiative on Race. While at the initiative, David led efforts to produce a national racial dialogue guide, spearheaded a project to highlight programs focused on racial reconciliation, organized meetings of the advisory board, created publications that were published in newspaper nationwide, and created national and statewide dialogue campaigns.

For a resume emphasizing his experiences and skills related facilitation and forum design,
click here.