FIFTY YEARS. ONE PURPOSE. ONE DAI.
Our Story
Fifty years ago, DAI was three founders and one idea. The idea was simple: do development differently and do it better. Don Mickelwait, John Buck, and Charlie Sweet called their new company Development Alternatives Inc. DAI.
In the five decades since that day in May 1970, we have worked in virtually every country on the planet (still waiting on you Taiwan). Despite some false starts and failed experiments, we have enjoyed enormous success and grown beyond the wildest dreams of the founders. We have evolved beyond all recognition.
But one thing has remained constant: our mission. To help people improve their lives.
When you ask DAI staff why they come to DAI, why they stay, and what they love about it, the answer is remarkably consistent: it’s the work we do and the people we do it with—the colleagues, counterparts, consultants, clients, and communities who bring our projects to life.
Projects that have brought life-changing benefits to tens of millions of people.
Although we are now 6,000 strong and operate in something like 100 countries, although we do all kinds of work in ever-changing and proliferating development disciplines, although we hail from hundreds of countries and speak scores of languages, our shared purpose binds us together as one team—across cultures, across organizational boundaries, across continents.
Just as it has bound us together across 50 years.
This shared purpose means that DAI has countless stories, but one overarching narrative. Tens of thousands of individual employees—past and present—but one distinctive character. All manner of business ventures, concepts, and development projects, but one overriding mandate—to shape a more livable world.
In this milestone year we hope to celebrate the longevity of the DAI idea in various ways, in various places. Because that founding, enduring idea is just as important to the next 50 years as it was to the first 50. We aim to keep doing development differently. Keep doing it better. And keep learning when we come up short.
We hope you’ll be part of it.
Fifty years. One purpose. One DAI.