David Anderson Hooker, J.D.

David Anderson Hooker joined Fanning in November 2009 as a Senior Fellow for Community Engagement.  In this role, he provides mediation, facilitation, community development consultation and capacity building training to state and local government entities, non-governmental organizations, congregations and communities.  He also conducts community assessments in preparation for either community building or multi party conflict resolution processes. His initial project was a special federally funded assessment of possible collaborative responses to persistent poverty in Athens-Clarke County.  He currently leads the mediation team that is addressing governance, personal and operational issues in support of a metro Atlanta School Board.

For more than 28 years, Mr. Hooker has assisted individuals, organizations, community groups, local, state and national governments to conduct important conversations on difficult subjects. Before becoming a mediator and lawyer, Mr. Hooker worked in an urban adult outpatient psychiatric clinic providing family, group and individual counseling.  Mr. Hooker represented the State of Georgia as an Assistant Attorney General, primarily representing the Department of Juvenile Justice and the Division of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.  He conducted internal investigations into allegations of abuse and neglect by juvenile detention facilities, mental health hospitals and community providers of mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse treatment.  He also developed an expertise in government ethics and civil rights.  As a mediator and facilitator, Mr. Hooker specializes in multiparty, politically charged and emotion laden conflicts.  He has worked with congregations, communities, local and state governments in structuring and implementing community dialogue around issues of environmental justice, inclusion, post-riot community reconciliation, prejudice reduction, community visioning, health care policy and other issues of public policy and social concern.  His experience allows him to structure and facilitate meaningful conversations about complex, technical and often highly visible issues with diverse populations.  He previously served as the Senior Program Officer for the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C. and as Vice President of Community Building for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Center for Working Families, Inc. (TCWFI).  At TCWFI, he established leadership development programs which allow members of currently marginalized, primarily minority (African-American, Hispanic, Asian and poor) communities to define, lead, own, benefit from and sustain the change they desired in their communities. 

Mr. Hooker earned a B.S. degree, cum laude, with majors in Biology and Psychology from Morehouse College. He also holds an MA in Minority Mental Health from Washington University in St. Louis; a M.P.H. and M.P.A. from University of Massachusetts in Amherst; and his J.D. and Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from Emory University. For eight years, Mr. Hooker has taught courses in peacebuilding, community building, conflict transformation, trauma healing and restorative justice as Associated Faculty at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Mr. Hooker has designed, taught and delivered leadership development, conflict transformation and community development processes in Bosnia, Myanmar (Burma), Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Southern Sudan.  He is also involved in the design and delivery of several innovative programs to heal the historical harms of racialized enslavement and segregation in the US South.  He currently serves on the Board of the Atlanta Beltline Partnership, Inc. and coordinates the local and global service work for his church, First Congregational Church (UCC) Atlanta, GA.