David W. Anderson
Restaurateur, businessman, former Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs
David W. Anderson, also known as Famous Dave, is an Ojibwe entrepreneur, businessman, and former U.S. government official. Anderson is the founder, namesake, and former head of the barbecue restaurant chain and retail brand Famous Dave's. He also served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs from 2004 to 2005 as a member of the George W. Bush administration, overseeing the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Indian Education Programs. Anderson has since established a second restaurant chain – Old Southern BBQ – and a standalone winery and pizzeria.
Anderson is a citizen of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and a descendant of the Choctaw Nation, and lives in Edina, Minnesota. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up there as well as on reservations in Wisconsin. Famous Dave Anderson now travels the country speaking and is the author of several award-winning books.
Philanthropy
In 2001, Anderson and his family founded The LifeSkills Center for Leadership, a 501(c)(3) which provided leadership experiences to at-risk and underprivileged Native American youths.
Personal life
Dave Anderson lives in Edina, Minnesota with his wife, Kathy. He has two kids, James (married to Colleen, née Bubb) and Tim, both residing in Minneapolis.
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This entry incorporates text from “David W. Anderson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.