Professional Bio
With a long-term background in international technical assistance, David Thaler currently serves as a senior mediator at FMCS. In this role, he designs, administers, and delivers U.S. technical assistance programs that involve the training of mediators, union officials and business leaders from around the world in advanced mediation and labor relations skills. Since 2019, Commissioner Thaler has delivered many programs for the ILO’s International Training Center in Turin, Italy. In 2021, Commissioner Thaler received the FMCS Director’s Award, the highest honor bestowed by the agency.
From 2018 to 2022, Commissioner Thaler served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Director of FMCS, helping to develop medium and long-range policy initiatives for the Agency in a variety of areas. From 2005 until 2018, he served as a field mediator in the Metropolitan New York Field Office, mediating disputes in the areas of collective bargaining, grievances based on violations of collective bargaining agreements, and disputes involving equal employment opportunity. While in the New York Area, Commissioner Thaler also trained labor and management partners in relationship development and conflict management and designed mediation and conflict management systems for educational and health care institutions, working with several large hospitals to design systems for managing conflict workplace conflict on a departmental level on an ongoing basis. He has also served as an instructor of incoming classes of new federal mediators and on the faculty of the FMCS Institute for Conflict Management.
Commissioner Thaler holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University, a J.D. from New York University, where he was a Norman Ostrow Scholar and an editor on the Moot Court Board, and a B.A. in International Relations and Spanish, Summa Cum Laude, from Tulane University, where he was admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. Commissioner Thaler has also authored or co-authored several publications relating to workplace issues for several international organizations and U.S. government agencies. Since 2014, Commissioner Thaler has been an Adjunct Professor of Conflict Management at Drew University, where he was the 2018 recipient of the Thomas H. Kean Award for excellence in graduate teaching.
