David Fair

LGBT and AIDS advocate, activist, and groundbreaker, nonprofit leader

David Fair has had a long career in both the public and nonprofit health and human services sector, having led major projects in the AIDS, child welfare and behavioral health fields. David has had a major impact on his communities throughout his life. In his younger years he was the founder of several early LGBT organizations in the 1970s, including the first Philadelphia Gay Cultural Festival and the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force, and in the 1980s he was a visionary leader who built one of the strongest local AIDS service systems in the nation, one designed to serve the most vulnerable among those at risk of HIV disease. He was at the time also a fierce advocate for the homeless, leading a major effort to engage homeless people with AIDS in the early 90s through We The People Living with AIDS/HIV.

In the late 90s David built an extensive school-based mental health services program that ultimately served over 100 public schools, helping to organize the first publicly-funded efforts to support kinship families. In the early 2000s he led the creation of a $100m network of community based youth services aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect, creating over 200 programs offering after school, truancy prevention, family support and parenting education programs. At United Way starting in 2005 he led a major transformation in the organization’s funding methods, aimed at supporting agencies with high quality outcomes. He currently is a leader in the creation of an innovate initiative to reform child welfare efforts in Philadelphia, focusing on children and families in West, Southwest and Lower Northeast Philadelphia. David has served on many nonprofit boards and in addition to several government roles, as Senior Vice President for Community Impact of United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania. He is currently the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Turning Points for Children.

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