Benita Dodd Cotton is a journalism graduate of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, who immigrated to the United States in 1986. The Cobb County resident was an editorial writer and columnist for The Atlanta Journal Editorial Board and an editorial writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editorial Board before joining the Georgia Public Policy Foundation as vice president in March 2003.
She leads the Foundation’s Environmental Initiative and communications. She is a member of the 2007 class of Leadership Georgia, a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s Leadership Network (class of 2015), and a faculty member of the Leadership Institute of Virginia. She serves on the Political Science Advisory Board at Kennesaw State University, on the Board of Advisors for America’s Future Foundation Georgia and on the Board of Governors for the Georgia Charter Schools Association, and is a Policy Advisor for the Heartland Institute. She served on the Board of Common Cause Georgia and was appointed in April 2020 to the Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
She addresses civic and leadership groups across Georgia on current issues and free-market solutions. She is a frequent contributor to newspapers, television and radio programs around the state, spent seven years providing free-market perspectives as a commentator on a weekly Atlanta Radio Korea program, and appears regularly on Current NewPo, an online video newstalk program for the News and Post Korean-American news service.
