Joe Waters is the co-founder and CEO of Capita, an independent think tank and community. Capita anticipates global change, shapes narratives, and partners with leaders to craft effective policies for a future in which families and their communities can flourish.

Since starting Capita in 2018, Joe has developed forward-leaning initiatives exploring how the great cultural, planetary, and social transformations of our day affect families and their communities. From the impacts of climate change to parental loneliness and social disconnection, and economic precarity, Capita’s work tackles deep, systemic, root-cause issues that remain underexplored but are crucial to the flourishing of families and their communities.

A 2021 Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow, Joe’s commentary on issues facing families has been published by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Investor’s Business Daily, The Hill, Newsweek, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Charlotte Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nonprofit Quarterly, Early Learning Nation, and other outlets. He has been an invited speaker at the White House’s first forum on social impact finance, the Aspen Forum on Children and Families, the Lego Idea Conference, Think Future, the World Forum on Early Care and Education, and the For the Good of the Public Summit.

Joe is a board member of Book Harvest and the Felician Center in Kingstree, South Carolina, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He graduated from Furman University (BA, history) and earned a master’s degree in divinity from Duke University.

Joe also serves as a Senior Advisor at Openfields, a Greenville, South Carolina-based consulting firm. Before starting Capita, Joe was the Executive Vice President of the Institute for Child Success, leading pioneering work helping governments pay child and family-focused service providers for outcomes.

He and his wife, Molly Benedum, a family physician, live with their son Albert and daughter Frances in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.