David Dodson ’77 B.A., ’81 M.Div., ’81 M.P.P.M.

David Dodson is the past president of MDC, which helps low-wealth communities flourish through education, training, and social mobility. He was a founder of MDC’s Passing Gear Philanthropy Institute, where he continues working with Southern philanthropic partners, as an MDC Senior Fellow.

Dodson joined MDC in 1987, became president in 1999 upon the death of founding President George Autry, and retired in 2020. He led place-based work across the South to address stalled economic mobility and build leadership to tackle unmet challenges on issues including rural development, community college reform, and postsecondary attainment, and he co-wrote MDC’s “State of the South” reports.

Prior to joining MDC, Dodson served as executive director of the Cummins Engine Foundation and director of corporate responsibility for Cummins Engine Company in Columbus, Ind., a corporate innovator in creating workplace democracy and corporate responsibility under its legendary CEO, Irwin Miller, who showed how institutions can harness economic and institutional power to tackle barriers to shared wellbeing.

In 2020, Dodson was the recipient of Yale Divinity School’s William Sloane Coffin Award for Peace and Justice.