Odetta MacLeish-White is the Director of Georgia Initiatives for the Center for Community Progress (CCP). In this newly created role, she will work to bring thought partnership and strategies for vacant, abandoned, and deteriorating properties to the state. Prior to joining CCP, Odetta was the Managing Director for the TransFormation Alliance, a partnership of nonprofits, government agencies, and businesses working with residents of impacted communities in shaping better health, climate, and economic outcomes through arts & culture-based community engagement, and by improving housing, transit and jobs access.

Prior to joining the TransFormation Alliance, Odetta was a Senior Program Director with Enterprise Community Partners in their Southeast market. She supported comprehensive community stabilization efforts around the country with a focus on equitable Transit Oriented Development initiatives and nonprofit capacity building in the state of Georgia and the Southeast.

Odetta has also served as a community development specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and was the staff director for Florida’s Affordable Housing Study Commission. She discovered her love for affordable housing while working for a developer in Gainesville, Florida. Odetta earned her juris doctorate and LLM in International Law from Duke University School of Law, and her bachelor’s degree in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard-Radcliffe University.