David L. Kay is a faculty member, social science researcher and educator in Cornell University’s Department of Global Development. As Department Extension Leader, David is concerned with the public missions of higher education in general and the nation’s land grant university and Cooperative Extension systems in particular. He currently serves as the Critical Issue Lead for Climate and Energy with Cornell Cooperative Extension in New York State and as Chair of the National Extension Climate Initiative (NECI). He is a New York State delegate with the Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN). He believes strongly in the power of local action, of partnerships, and in the importance of boundary spanning or intermediary organizations.
Initially trained as an economist, David was for many years affiliated with Cornell’s Local Government Program and then Community and Regional Development Institute. While intending to help inform decision making at the community scale, his work has encompassed themes like energy and waste management, land use planning and the environment, community development and regional economics, and community capacity for collaborative problem solving. He has co-authored and reviewed numerous reports and peer reviewed publications on these topics, and served a term as co-editor of the Journal of the Community Development Society. Since joining the Department of Global Development, David has increasingly explored the relationships between the “local” and the “global”.
David is a trained transformative mediator active in the Climate Change Project of Mediators Beyond Borders International and with his area’s community mediation center. He was a member of the leadership team within Cooperative Extension that created and implemented the national program Coming Together for Racial Understanding (CTRU). In partnership with the organization Everyday Democracy, CTRU’s train the trainer model has helped Extension use forms of deliberative dialogue in helping communities to address racial division.. He also a workshop moderator with Braver Angels, an organization devoted to “depolarizing America”.
Over the years, David has served on a variety of non-profit as well as local, state and national governance and advisory boards. He currently chairs his city’s Sustainability and Climate Justice Commission and serves on the New York State energy agency’s (NYSERDA) Agricultural Technical Working Group on utility scale solar development.