My Bio

David Cohen is a Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures and senior advisor to Experience Corps. He served as Co-Chair of the Advocacy Institute Board and is one of its two founders. Cohen pioneered the Institute’s work in its international capacity-building programs, where he facilitated workshop and strategy sessions.

Cohen was also an active participant in the Institute’s Leadership for a Changing World Program, directing the Learning Initiatives aspect of the program. The program provided funds for the learning of awardees and their colleagues to strengthen the overall purpose of an organization’s program.

Advocacy practitioners around the world have translated his writings on advocacy, civil society, and lobbying into many different languages. His writings have appeared as essays in college textbooks and in major U.S. newspapers. His publications include a chapter in the Non-Profit Lobbying Guide (by Bob Smucker) entitled “Being A Public Interest Lobbyist Is Something To Write Home About.” He also coauthored Advocacy for Social Justice: A Global Action and Reflection Guide.

Cohen has been an advocate and strategist on many of the major social justice and political reform issues in the United States since the early 1960s. He played a leading role in the fight for Congress to end its support for the Vietnam War. From 1984 to 1992, he led the Professionals’ Coalition for Nuclear Arms Control to stop the U.S. nuclear arms build-up by supporting arms control agreements and reducing the military budget. He served as president of Common Cause, the largest voluntary membership organization in the United States working on government accountability issues.