Joe Waters is the co-founder and CEO of Capita, an independent think tank and community. Capita aspires to a future where families and their communities flourish by anticipating global changes, shifting narratives, crafting policies, and partnering with leaders to implement them.

Since starting Capita in 2018, Joe has developed forward-leaning initiatives to explore the major transformations of our time—social, demographic, cultural, technological, environmental, and economic—and anticipate their potential impacts on families and their communities worldwide.

Joe also serves as a Senior Advisor at Openfields, a Greenville, South Carolina-based consulting firm. Prior to starting Capita, he was the Executive Vice President of the Institute for Child Success. A 2021 Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow, Joe’s commentary on issues facing America’s families has been published widely by local, national, regional and international outlets. Joe earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Furman University and a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University. While at Duke, he completed a year as a visiting student at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He also earned a certificate in Franciscan Studies from the University of St. Francis.

He and his wife, Molly Benedum, a family physician, live with their children in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.