David Kendall

As a high school student in suburban Chicago, Dave fought to change the form of student government where the principal handpicked the members. He created a new charter for a student representative assembly that gave students a true voice. Since then, Dave has never stopped challenging the way things are done in order to make them work better.

At Third Way, Dave leads the health policy work with a focus on fiscal impact. He is creating a fresh approach to cut health care costs that can replace the tired debate over the Affordable Care Act. This approach uses behavioral economics to create new policy tools that anticipate the irrational choices that everyone sometimes makes. Dave creates new policy ideas, develops a communications strategy to win support for them, and builds political alliances that can lead to their enactment.

Dave's experience on the Hill equipped him for his work at Third Way. In the early 1990s, he worked with moderate Democrats on the Hill to change the traditional approach to Democratic health policy-making, known as single-payer health care. Although he didn't succeed in the Clinton era, the approach of combining market-based insurance reforms with federal subsidies to make health care coverage affordable eventually became the basis of President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

Prior to working on Capitol Hill for Congressmen Michael Andrews and James R. Jones, Dave studied public affairs at the University of Chicago. He has achieved a unique work-life balance by living in Montana with his wife and two sons while commuting regularly to Washington, D.C.