David Dunkelman

Raised in Ohio, David Dunkelman, M.S., J.D., expanded his experience by traveling around the world for a year after graduating from college. He visited 26 countries and three war zones, and observed many ways people live and die. He left the United States an angry young man and returned a patriot after seeing how so many other societies functioned. After graduating from Temple University School of Law, he helped his family’s apparel company grow to an organization distributing to 5,000 retailers nationally. The company closed when computers suddenly disrupted the nation’s centuries-old clothing supply chain, an ominous preview to what would also happen to aging in America.

Changing focus, Dunkelman earned a master’s degree from the Center for Studies in Aging at the University of North Texas, after which he eventually landed in Buffalo, New York, where for 30 years he was the founding President and CEO of The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Campus, one of the nation’s largest and most multifaceted campuses for older people. The campus was the first such organization to be named a winner of the national Peter F. Drucker Award for Innovation in Nonprofit Management.

Among his many individual awards are the Community Leadership Award from the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies, Buffalo (2013), and the Dr. Evan Calkins Meritorious Service Award for “lifetime contributions to the field of aging,” presented by the Western New York Network in Aging, Inc. (2007).

Using creative problem-solving techniques developed at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Dunkelman has consulted nationally with more than 25 communities, helping them to develop strategic approaches to facility and programmatic design for older people. He writes and speaks about aging in America.