In the mid 1990's we had a photographer take a picture of us as newdynamics partners and colleagues, as shown on this website. We first had a picture of the eight of us seated in two rows. It didn’t work. We then asked the photographer to place us as a group. For his own reasons, he started with David, and then, arranged the rest of us around him. David ended up in the middle. As you can imagine a strong theme in our multicultural work is for white people to understand the cultural centrality of white people, particularly for white men. There wasn’t one of us that didn’t immediately think, the white man is in the center, again. But, we laughed and said very little. It was fine. I think that we each felt seen wherever we were, and it was the group that was important.

For me, it has also symbolized the centrality David played as a white man in our work. We could not have done the professionally-recognized work that we have done without a white man who was willing to be himself and hold his own in the firm, with a white man’s point of view. It has been crucial to who we are today. Although David was proud of his Tuscarora heritage, he always made it clear that he was raised as a white man and carried the cultural norms of white men. For his diversity work, he identified white. At those times that participants identified with their cultural heritage, David identified both white and American Indian.

From the early 1970's, newdynamics was a firm that included both men and women in diversity work. David was the first man in newdynamics and an ‘early’ white man in the field of Organization Development specializing in diversity work, working first gender, then multicultural, and then sexual orientation issues. David came to the work with sincerity, humility, patience, and a keen intellect. We were a firm that assumed that if we did not understand and be willing to speak of our own behavior on a journey away from cultural dominance and subordination, then we had nothing to say to our clients or anyone else. David was not afraid to look at his own process as a man of great diversity, himself. To be a white man in diversity work has its own trauma. To do the work as David did, with elegance, truthfulness, self-awareness, and caring for others, is rare indeed.

An early writing of mine was Beyond Victim Behavior. Part of the dedication was to David. It said, “To David, who utterly refuses to let me be either one-up or one-down.” Our work was always to be in equity as a man and woman, and as colleagues in our diversity work, yet he knew that what was needed to role model was comfort as a white man with a strong woman, person of color, or a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered person. David did this non-competitively, with aplomb and humor.

His willingness to stay with himself in his maleness, whiteness, and heterosexuality brought depth and candor to his work. His influence on the men with whom we worked, whether they be white, a person of color, straight, gay, bisexual, or transgendered was the cornerstone and strength of a team of dedicated individuals working as change agents no matter where we were: New York, Boston, Burlington, VT. Orono, ME, Chicago, Portland, OR, Montana, Nashville, Milwaukee, Washington, DC, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Amsterdam, or Kobe, Japan. Or, Florida, when it became apparent Klu Klux Klan men were in the room.

An out-growth of our diversity work was the development of Power Equity Group Theory, which has become an accepted theoretical base in the Organization Development world. David was a major presence from the beginning in the emergence of this group work, giving major support, intellectual vision, and insight in the experiential process of its creation.
David’s name as an author, is on several books that will long be used and remembered. At least one is yet to be published.

David Wagner lived in Burlington, Vermont with his wife Allie Stickney. The five children of his blended family are young adults. He has five grandchildren.

David lived what he learned on his journey of life with family, colleagues, and friends. He will always live on in our work and life. Our love for him and who he was, will always be remembered, and live on in work yet to be completed.