David Evans

David Evans is an award-winning writer and counselor/mediator. He has an Emmy Award (shared) for writing on The Monkees and two Outstanding Case of the Year Awards for The Los Angeles County Court Alternative Dispute Resolution Program.

The focus of Evans' work is:

To help people get along better and treat each other with greater respect–especially across racial, cultural, and gender barriers.

Evans' first career was in humor and comedy. He worked for American Greetings in Cleveland for two years, writing funny greeting cards. One of his all-time best-selling greeting cards had a big raised button on the cover. The line on the front said, “Press this magic button, and it will make you a year younger.” On the inside, the card said, “I know. It didn’t work for me either.”

After greeting cards, Evans moved to Los Angeles, where he spent several years as a comedy writer for television. He wrote for such shows as, The Monkees and Love American Style.

During this period, Evans wrote a book of cartoons about the Bible titled The Good Book…of Bible Cartoons. It became a best seller. One of Evans' typical cartoons for this book contains a headline that reads, “Lazarus, Raised from the Dead by Jesus, Returns to His Job.” The drawing shows two men talking. We hear one saying, “I’m sorry I missed work last week. I was dead.”

Later, Evans had an opportunity to pursue a two-year graduate program in psychology emphasizing resolving conflict. The Plowshares Institute, a peace and justice organization, offered the degree with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the board. The course culminated with an immersion experience in South Africa, where Evans' small group met with, and interviewed, members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

One of Evans' strong beliefs about conflict is that a great deal comes about because of a failure of the imagination. Because failure of the imagination is such a causative factor in conflicts, Evans' personal conflict resolution style emphasizes the importance of using creativity and innovation.

For the past 20 years, Evans has been a mediator in various settings. He served as a mediator in the Los Angeles County Superior Court Alternative Dispute Program for three years. While serving in the court program, Evans mentored several students from the graduate dispute resolution program at Pepperdine Law School.

One day one of Evans' Pepperdine students, noting his emphasis on creativity, said, “Could you teach us how to be innovators?”

So, he put together a creativity/innovation course that he published as the book, One Good Idea.

He titled the course (and book) One Good Idea because he noted that many frustrated people are really just one good idea away from a major breakthrough. Evans' course helps them find that one good idea!

It’s a fun course involving humor because humor and innovation have much in common. Humor and innovation are asymmetric and are oxygenated by the catalyst of surprise.

Evans strives to enlarge the scope of his work. He is applying the tools, strategies, and insights gained as a mediator to the long-standing meta-conflict between white people and Black people in the U.S. It is a problem that has long troubled him.

But he believes there are simple, tangible things we could do to vastly improve the situation. Evans shares his insights and strategies on this question in my new book, Black & White: How to Have Our American Conversation About Race. (It is published as an ebook at $2.99 per copy through Amazon Kindle.)

Evans believes this book could make a big difference!