Civic Strategies Bios :::

Otis White is president of Civic Strategies, Inc. He is an authority on community decision making and one of America's most quoted analysts of civic leadership.

In his consulting practice, Otis has worked with numerous governments, non-profit organizations and companies, including Georgia Power Co., the Iowa State Association of Counties, the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the University System of Georgia, Augusta-Richmond County, GA, the city of Springboro, Ohio, the Lilly Endowment, AT&T, and many others.

Otis has conducted studies of civic leadership from Boston to Los Angeles, San Jose, Calif., to Nashville, Tenn. From 2002 to 2007, he was a columnist for Governing magazine about urban issues. He has also written for the New York Times and other publications. He has been quoted by newspapers and magazines ranging from the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine to the Christian Science Monitor and the Financial Times of London and has been a regular commentator on the National Public Radio show, Smart City. He is now working on a book about how civic leaders can make good decisions for their communities.

Before starting Civic Strategies, Otis was a business journalist and magazine executive.  He is a former editor and publisher of Georgia Trend magazine, a business magazine, and vice president of Trend Magazines, Inc.  In 1982, he won the prestigious Alicia Patterson Fellowship, allowing him to spend a year studying how computers were changing work in America.

Otis is a graduate of Columbus State University in Georgia and Columbia University in New York.

Jon Abercrombie is of counsel to Civic Strategies. He specializes in large-group facilitation and town hall meetings, with extensive experience in community diversity issues.

Jon has led major visioning programs for the city of Decatur, Georgia, at which hundreds of citizens were involved in what came to be known as the “Decatur Round Tables.” He has also managed visioning initiatives, including extensive town hall meetings, for Fayetteville, N.C., and Augusta, GA.

Jon assisted the Decatur Public Schools in drawing new attendance boundaries by involving more than 400 parents and designed a campus-wide discussion of race and diversity for Oglethorpe University. He has facilitated retreats of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners and others.

Jon is a graduate of Bryan College in Tennessee with master’s degrees from Georgia State University and the University of Memphis.

Joe Winter is project manager for Civic Strategies. Joe is a graduate of Georgia State University, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in business and policy studies. As a former employee of Lotus Development Co. and IBM Corp., Joe has an extensive background in technology.

Tom Billitteri is of counsel to Civic Strategies.  His expertise is in writing, editing and nonprofit communications. Tom was a journalist for more than 30 years, working for daily newspapers, business magazines and, most recently, the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington, D.C. Today, he does communications consulting work for nonprofits across the country. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Indiana University.