Meet David Oliver, NCS Board President

David Oliver has been President of the NCS Board of Directors since 2008, but he began helping his neighbors long before then.

Growing up in Wisconsin, David's family welcomed people from all walks of life to their home and delivered holiday dinners to those in need in the Milwaukee area each year. But it wasn’t until he moved to New York City in the late 1980s that he was genuinely struck by the extreme poverty and wealth disparity he found. It moved him to want to be personally more involved in finding solutions to closing the gap.

David began volunteering at an overnight shelter serving NCS clients run by Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and St. James’ Church, where David is a member. He would often bring his ten-year-old daughter Anne along with him. Anne loved playing piano, and one night she was encouraged to play a duet with a homeless man who had been a jazz musician in earlier days. A rapt audience member wanted to reward Anne with a dollar, even though this was probably one of the very few dollars he had. David was moved by this experience to become an active member of the NCS community and hasn’t looked back since.

Soon after that night he met with Dick Dunham, a fellow St. James’ parishioner and one of NCS’s founding board members, and Stephanie Guest, then the President of the NCS Board of Directors. David was impressed from the first meeting, not just by NCS’s mission but by the organization’s focus on treating people as people. “NCS didn’t look at people without homes as different but as people who just happen to be without homes, and that really resonated with me and still does today,” David shared.

David joined the NCS Board of Directors in 2006 and became President of the Board in 2008 when Stephanie stepped down after serving in that position for ten years. “It was a function of being the one to raise my hand and volunteer to do the job,” he explained. “I got involved because of how important it is to me to take personal responsibility for my community and this was the next step.”

He continues to be impressed, especially by the staff and his fellow board members. “I view my role as a facilitator and less of a leader, because everyone on the Board is a leader just by showing up and participating. From the very start, I was impressed by the staff and their level of commitment to the mission but that was seen on an even deeper level during the pandemic.”

For David, what he finds most special about NCS and why he has dedicated so much of his time to the organization is NCS’s ability to adapt to new environments and seek new opportunities to make significant impacts. This can be seen from our earliest days as one of the first organizations to offer supportive housing until this year with the opening of NCS Scholars.

“To me, while housing college students is something new, it’s also entirely in keeping with what NCS has always done from the earliest days. We’re always thinking about the issues, ensuring we’re finding solutions that are financially sustainable and can continue to have an impact. It’s an entrepreneurial response to homelessness and really appeals to me.”

David and his wife Suzanne still live on the Upper East Side, where they raised their three children. Together, the Oliver family embodies NCS’s founding philosophy of “neighbors helping neighbors.”

Thank you, David for your many years of support!