Benita Cotton-Orr

Benita Cotton-Orr founded High Grounds Consulting LLC in 2022 after a career in conservative public policy that followed a career in journalism, including serving on the Editorial Board of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A native of South Africa, Benita is a journalism graduate of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, who immigrated to the United States in 1986 and settled in Georgia. She 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, Georgia’s premier free-market think tank. As vice president, she led the Foundation’s Environmental Initiative, offering conservative policy proposals on issues surrounding water, air, land use, energy and transportation, among others, and was responsible for the Foundation’s communications and media relations. A member of the 2007 class of Leadership Georgia, Benita serves on the Political Science Advisory Board at Kennesaw State University, on the Board of Governors of the Georgia Charter Schools Association, on the Board of First Generation Americans Foundation (which focuses on immigrant-corporate relations), and on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s Advisory Task Force for Georgia. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Badger Institute and a policy advisor for the Heartland Institute, served on the boards of America’s Future Foundation Georgia and Common Cause Georgia and was a faculty member of the Leadership Institute of Virginia. Benita is a respected voice for conservative, principled, policy solutions who has moderated events and addressed civic and leadership groups across Georgia on current issues and free-market solutions. She has been a frequent contributor to newspapers and television and radio programs around the state and spent seven years providing free-market perspectives as a conservative commentator on a weekly Atlanta Radio Korea program.