What we talked about
David Dubinsky leads the Pomeroy Recreation and Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco, a true community benefit organization open seven days a week, from early morning to late evening. He explains how Pomeroy serves multiple groups in one shared space: around 225 adults with developmental disabilities who come daily for classes, community, and work support; about 85 children, many with autism, who arrive after school for extra learning and behavioral support; and the broader community through a warm, salt based pool and a full size gym. David shares how the center runs like a community college with multiple classes per day, while also offering rehabilitation and swim programs that benefit seniors, families, and infants.
Show notes
David Dubinsky describes a moment on a San Francisco street when a homeless man noticed mud on his pants and walked over with a rag to help clean it, without being asked. Dubinsky says he had not even noticed the man standing behind him, and that single encounter changed how he moves through the world and how he talks about empathy with his 156-person staff. That kind of story is central to how he leads Pomeroy, a community center where infants learn to swim before they can walk and where children with the most difficult behaviors in their schools tend to settle once they are no longer the only one who is different.
What we covered
- Pomeroy’s infant water safety program runs as an eight-week sequence in a 92-degree, salt-water pool. By the end, babies as young as seven or eight months can swim to the wall and find their way to the exit on their own. Dubinsky’s logic is that a child who learns this before age one will never panic at the edge of a neighbor’s pool, and the warm, non-chlorinated water means even infants with sensitive skin can participate comfortably.
- Pomeroy receives children from 32 San Francisco schools, including some who are described by their teachers as the three most difficult kids in the building. Teachers visit and ask how the staff manages all of them together. Dubinsky’s answer is simple: when the children arrive, they are no longer the special ed kids or the different ones. They are just kids, surrounded by others who are also somewhat different, and the pressure disappears.
- Dubinsky draws a careful distinction between integration and peer community. He notes that just as seniors sometimes prefer to be at a senior center playing poker with their peers, people with developmental disabilities also benefit from environments where no one is judging them. Both things, diversity and peer belonging, have value, and pretending one replaces the other misses the point.
- A woman at Pomeroy who uses a wheelchair, is nonverbal, and has no financial resources or titles has what Dubinsky calls the most infectious smile he has ever encountered. When she is not there, people notice. He uses her as the clearest example he has that value does not require credentials, communication, or standing, only presence and the willingness of others to pay attention.
- His closing framework for anyone who wants to live with more empathy is a single instruction: learn to listen. Not to hear, to listen. He describes listening as trying to understand someone at the same level they are communicating, which means setting aside biases about appearance, language, pronouns, or tattoos long enough to receive what the person is actually saying.
- He cites Mother Teresa’s phrase, “if you can’t feed a thousand, feed one”, as the philosophy that shapes how he thinks about impact as he finishes his career. The person in front of you might go on to affect a thousand others, and you will never know. That uncertainty is not a reason to hesitate. It is the entire point.
About David
David Dubinsky is the CEO of the Pomeroy Recreation and Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco, a role he has held since 2016 after more than 35 years in nonprofit leadership. Under his leadership, Pomeroy has expanded services, grown financial reserves, raised wages, and upgraded facilities while serving children through seniors, including a large community of adults with developmental disabilities.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daviddubinsky
- Website: http://www.prrcsf.org
Episode 121 of the PreVetted Podcast.