Pete Davis

Pete Davis is a writer and civic advocate from Falls Church, Virginia.

He works on civic projects aimed at deepening American democracy and solidarity. Pete is the co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network, a state policy organization focused on raising up ideas that deepen democracy, and is currently co-producing a documentary on the life and work of civic guru Robert Putnam. In 2015, he cofounded Getaway, a company that provides simple, unplugged escapes to tiny cabins outside of major cities. His Harvard Law School graduation speech, “A Counterculture of Commitment,” has been viewed more than 30 million times — and was recently expanded into a book: Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in An Age of Infinite Browsing.

Pete is also the author of Our Bicentennial Crisis: A Call to Action for Harvard Law School’s Public Interest Mission, a book on reviving Harvard Law School’s public interest mission, and the co-author of How To Get Away: Finding Balance in our Overworked, Overcrowded, Always-On World, a book articulating Getaway’s philosophy of balancing technology and disconnection, city and nature, and work and leisure. His opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Daily NewsAeonThe GuardianFast CompanyAmerica Magazine, and The Falls Church News-Press.

Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing

Writer and civic advocate Pete Davis has expanded his viral Harvard commencement address about the power of commitment into a critically-acclaimed book. In Dedicated, Davis explores the modern tension between two cultures: a Culture of Open Options and a Counterculture of Commitment. He observes that while we admire the dedication of society’s “long-haul heroes” and may even want to emulate them, certain fears keep us eternally glued to the fence. Dedicated reveals some of the drawbacks of constantly living between options without ever diving in, and shows the untapped goodness that waits for us on the other side of commitment to causes, places, and communities.


Bio information sourced from Wikipedia