About Dave
A long-time civil rights activist, educator, and public policy specialist, Dave has served as a secondary school teacher and coach, a professor of economic history, a legislative budget analyst, and a non-profit executive and volunteer. He earned a PhD at Louisiana State University, where he studied in the LSU departments of history and economics.
Work & Advocacy in the Bayou State
In Louisiana, Dave was a member of the YWCA Statewide Racial Justice Steering Committee and a long-time volunteer with the Louisiana Tax Justice Coalition. He worked in numerous Democratic Party campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s, including both Gary Hart presidential campaigns, and the gubernatorial campaigns of Edwin Edwards, Mary Landrieu, and Cleo Fields. He was also a part of the Clinton-Gore Louisiana “Rapid Response” teams in the 1992 and 1996 campaigns. From 1996-99, Dave served as a budget analyst and health care finance expert for the Louisiana House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, while also teaching U.S. history courses in the LSU evening school.
In Virginia
After having arrived in Charlottesville in 1999, Dave became the Deputy Director of the Presidential Recordings Project at the UVa Miller Center of Public Affairs and a professor of history who regularly taught classes and seminars in recent political history, presidential economics, and public finance. Early on, Dave joined the Virginia Organizing Tax Reform Committee, and through this volunteer work became a principal economic adviser to the United for a Fair Economy Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative, which included over 25 organizations in 23 states. He is the author of the UFE-TFOC “State Idealized Tax Model” handbook.
He also worked for the National Governors Association, where he authored a centennial history of governors and tax policy to commemorate the NGA’s 100th anniversary, and for the University of Virginia Center for Survey Research, where, among other duties, he created a local five-county Consumer Sentiment Index. He was a long-time director on the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority and a member of the regional Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee.
Dave has also served as the chair or co-chair of the Albemarle Democratic Party Jack Jouett District since 2009, and is the current chair of the Albemarle Democratic Party’s James and Nellie Butler Scholarship Committee.
Non-Profit Leader and Volunteer
In the rich Charlottesville-area non-profit community, Dave has served as an executive, board member, or volunteer at Wintergreen Adaptive Sports, The Blue Ridge Men’s Baseball League, WVPT-TV, The Prism Coffeehouse, The Adventure Amputee Camp, Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population, the National Educators Association Tax Structures, Economic Development, and Funding for Schools Initiative, and the Albemarle Foundation for Education. He was also a State Department Cultural Ambassador in Turkmenistan, where he helped the Turkmenistan government develop sports opportunities for its citizens with physical and cognitive disabilities.
The Shreve Family
(left to right) daughter Julia, 23, Second-year graduate student, PA program, Murphy Deming College of Health Sciences; Dave; Dave’s wife Leslie, Corporate Tax Auditor; daughter Emma, 31, Attorney, Washington, D.C.
Emma & Julia are both graduates of Greer Elementary, Jack Jouett (now Journey) Middle School, and Albemarle HS. Julia is a graduate of JMU (2023), and Emma is a graduate of UVa (2015) & Columbia Law (2022).