Founder

Profile

David Straus founded Interaction Associates (IA) in 1969. Over the years, he served as a principal consultant, President & CEO, and Chairman of the Board. With David’s guidance, IA became a recognized leader in group process facilitation, organizational development, and collaborative change management.

Under grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Carnegie Corporation, David conducted original research in creativity and collaborative problem solving. He co-authored the bestseller, How to Make Meetings Work (Wyden Books, 1976) and How To Make Collaboration Work (Berrett-Koehler, 2002).

David defined the foundation principals and framework for The Interaction Method™, a facilitated approach for building understanding and agreement so that people can take informed, concerted action. Since not-for-profit leaders and public school administrators learned IA’s group facilitation methodology in the early 1970s, over 1 million people around the world have been trained in some form of The Interaction Method™.

David asserted that people can be the “architects of their own future” by learning and practicing tools for thinking clearly, skills for working with others, and expanding their own “process awareness.”

In addition to consulting with dozens of organizations, David pioneered the use of visioning and collaborative problem solving to guide urban transformation planning, e.g., San Francisco’s Yerba Buena renewal project, the Newark Collaboration Project and the Future of Denver Plan.

Most recently, David has served on the Board of Directors for Mass Audubon Society, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and The Coolidge Corner Theater Foundation.

Mr. Straus earned a Bachelors degree from Harvard University, and a Master’s degree in architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.