Dave Dunford retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1995 following completion of his assignment as Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman.  He served from 1988-92 in Saudi Arabia as Deputy Ambassador, including 15 months as Acting Ambassador.  His other Foreign Service assignments included Director of Egyptian Affairs in the Department of State in Washington, DC, Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs at the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative in the Executive Office of the President.

Dunford was an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Arizona from 1996 to 2016.  He taught courses on the Arab Israeli Conflict and the Middle East Business Environment.  He was an Adjunct Professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management from 1998 - 2000.  He is on the Governing Board of the University of Arizona’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He was a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow with multiple visits to small colleges and universities throughout the U.S from 2004 to 2016.  Between 2004 and 2011, he traveled to Korea, Germany and to various military bases in the U.S. to assist in the training of U.S. forces being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

During 1997-8, Dave Dunford was Coordinator of the Transition Team for the establishment of the Bank for Economic Cooperation and Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENABANK).  The team’s office was in Cairo.  From April to June of 2003, he worked for the Organization of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, and later the Coalition Provisional Authority, in Baghdad as Senior Ministerial Liaison to Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  He has co-authored a book  about this experience: Talking to Strangers: The Struggle to Rebuild Iraq’s Foreign Ministry.  His latest book published in 2019  by Potomac Books is From Sadat to Saddam: The Decline of American Diplomacy in the Middle East.

He divides his time between Tucson and Durango.