Odetta MacLeish-White
Director of Engagement
Odetta MacLeish-White is the Director of Engagement for the Center for Community Progress. A consummate networker and problem solver, she works within the Education, Leadership, and Engagement team to cultivate relationships with residents, local governments, state agencies, and others in the service of programs that help local stakeholders fight property vacancy and deterioration in Georgia and the American South.
MacLeish-White draws on her more than two decades of experience in affordable housing development, policy, financing, community development, and coalition-building to build the relationships and networks that help communities achieve equitable revitalization. She spearheads projects at Community Progress focused on the connection between heirs’ property and vacancy, and bolstering the pipeline of developers of color into the community revitalization space, among others.
Previously, she served as the Managing Director of the TransFormation Alliance, a partnership of nonprofits, government agencies, and businesses working to strengthen communities through transit in metro Atlanta. She also worked with Enterprise Community Partners to bring capacity-building grants to communities and nonprofits responding to the foreclosure crisis, affordable housing crisis, and gentrification and displacement. She leverages this experience to help community members influence decisions around development, funding, and revitalization that impact their neighborhoods.
MacLeish-White brings to Community Progress her internationally recognized thought leadership on the intersections of racial equity, health, climate, and economic outcomes. She was a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow in the “Building Healthy, Equitable Communities: The Role of Inclusive Urban Development and Investment” cohort, culminating in the co-authorship of a statement on power and privilege in community development published by the British Journal of Medicine.
MacLeish-White earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and American Literature & Language from Harvard-Radcliffe University and a Juris Doctor/LLM in International Law from Duke University School of Law. She is based in Marietta, Georgia.