David Fuente

David Fuente is a 5th-year doctoral student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill and a William R. Kenan Jr. Fellow in the Royster Society of Fellows. He is an applied environmental economist and planner who works on global water and sanitation issues.  Over the course of his career, David has worked on a wide range of issues in the water and sanitation space, including: rural drinking water supply, participatory irrigation management, integrated land and watershed management, and business models to serve the bottom of the pyramid. More recently, David’s research has focused on the provision of municipal water and sanitation services in low and middle-income countries. His dissertation examines water pricing and tariff reform in Nairobi, Kenya.
Prior to returning to graduate school, David was Program Head for Infrastructure and Governance at the Centre for Development Finance (CDF) in India. At CDF David led a multidisciplinary team of researchers to implement a portfolio of initiatives focused on infrastructure finance, governance, and service delivery across both rural and urban India.
David has also served as an adjunct faculty member at the School for Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University where he helped launch IU’s Office of Sustainability.  In 2003, David was awarded a William J. Clinton Fellowship from the American India Foundation to work with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.  In 2001, David served as a Jane Addams-Andrew Carnegie Fellow at Indiana University’s School of Philanthropy.
Over the course of his career, David has conducted extensive fieldwork and/or worked in South Asia (India), the Middle East (Egypt), and East Africa (Kenya).
David has a BA in Geology (Colby College), an MA in Philanthropic Studies (Indiana University), an MS in Environmental Science-Water Resources (Indiana University), and an MPA (Indiana University).