Alumni Spotlight: David Bach, Unity House CEO
By Indiana Nash
ALBANY, N.Y. (Nov. 24, 2025) — In the classrooms at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, David Bach learned all about how local government and public policy work and, perhaps more importantly, how systems work.
“Early on they introduced us to systems learning and that’s how my brain works, so it was validating for me. I learned a lot but more than anything it taught me how my brain processes things. That solidified my choice when I came here,” Bach said.
Bach, who is now the CEO of Unity House in Troy, graduated from Rockefeller College with a master's degree in public administration and policy in 2006, a decade after getting his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University at Albany. UAlbany has long been an important place in Bach’s life for another reason too: He met his wife, Jen, there in 1995.
The bulk of Bach’s career has been spent in human services, starting in Schenectady County, where he worked for a nonprofit serving at-risk youth before becoming an investigator in the county’s child protective services department. He went on to have a distinguished career in the New York State Office of Child and Family Services as the director of quality assurance and improvement for the Division of Juvenile Justice and Opportunities for Youth. There he developed a quality assurance program for juvenile detention centers, using skills he garnered at Rockefeller. He eventually became the associate commissioner of the Division of Child Welfare and Community Services.
Bach switched gears in 2022, taking the helm at Unity House. The large nonprofit, which has around 400 employees, offers a wide range of services, from domestic violence services to housing programs for people with HIV/AIDs.
We recently caught up with Bach about how his time at Rockefeller shaped his career and the challenges that came with transitioning to working at a nonprofit.
What made you land on Rockefeller College’s MPA program?
My undergrad was here at UAlbany, and when I worked for Schenectady County, they encouraged people to get a degree higher than the degree required for the position by paying for it. I needed to support my family and when you’re thinking about being a provider and supporting your family you’re thinking “How do I make the most money for the thing that I’m qualified for and that I’m going to like?” I can sit in this county job, and I can climb the ranks and take some service tests and at some point, get somewhere. Or I can fast track myself by getting a degree in something that’s marketable in the field.
I knew I didn’t want to be a social worker. I knew I wanted to manage and work in the public sector. Rockefeller’s reputation was great, and it was in my backyard. Why would I go anywhere else than Albany?
There were times that I was working, and I would run down to a class in the middle of an investigation, go to my class, and then go back and go to the hospital to interview a kid. I was working 60 to 70 hours a week and balancing class and schoolwork. But it motivated me. I saw the potential for my career.
From there, I met my mentor, Bob McEvoy, the longtime county manager for Schenectady and a professor at Rockefeller. I was really attracted to the systems classes. Early on they introduced us to systems learning and that’s how my brain works, so it was validating for me. I learned a lot but more than anything it was about how my brain processes things. That solidified my choice when I came here.
What made you want to work in child protective services?
I wanted to work with people. I saw that side of it when I was working with at-risk youth. I was working with kids that were growing up in urban areas, in poverty, and it was just natural to work with people regardless of where they were.
I was brought up in a really diverse environment and working with people whose families were struggling, and the kids were struggling. Working with them just came easy for me. It was a high demand, tough job. But I read people and engage with them really well and applying that to investigations worked out well for me.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve had at Unity House?
In every job I had before this one, I was a fixer. I was always walking in and having to fix something or react to something. So, the initial challenge was that I was looking at Unity House as if I needed to fix things and then I realized that it was a really well-run agency that I inherited. I didn’t have to fix it. That was great. So, changing my perspective for the first time in my career was probably one of the bigger challenges.
Nonprofits are tough, but it’s really about making sure that you support the staff. My job and my executive team, our first priority, is not necessarily the services. Our priority is our staff. If we take care of our staff, the services are naturally going to be taken care of. Our staff get involved here because they love people, so if we take care of them, they’ll take care of the people.
My biggest challenge as a nonprofit executive is that I hate asking for money. And I have to. Luckily, I work for a great agency and it sells itself. I’m humbled and proud every day.
Is there anything that you wish more people knew about Unity House?
We do so much. We have a domestic violence program. We have employment services, we work with people with developmental disabilities recovering from drugs and alcohol to help them get jobs. We have a huge housing program for people with HIV/AIDS. We do a ton. If you’re in need in the Capital Region, we most likely have a service that’s going to help you. If not, we have a service where we’ll tell you where you need to go. That’s called Community Resources, and it’s vastly underutilized.
We’re in the process of launching a teaching kitchen, where we’ll make scratch-made pizza and frozen custard, and we’ll employ local kids. They’ll learn soft skills like how to talk to people. We want kids to work the front of the house because that’s a highly transferable skill. It doesn’t matter what you’re going to do, from turning a wrench to working on Wall Street, if you have good communication skills, you’re going to do better than other people.
We also recently set up our own real estate brokerage. We created an entire 501-(c)(3), so we do all of our real estate transactions through it. The cool part is we were able to fund several of our employees to get their relators license so they can work buy, sell and manage property for us. They can do that nights and weekends and make more money.
What do you like to do outside of your work at Unity House?
My wife and I have a little camp up north that we’re restoring. We do a lot of construction. She designs it, tells me what to do, and then I do it.
We also make wine together and lately we’ve been trying to go to as many comedy shows as we can.