Gordon Whitman is Director of Policy for PICO National Network. As a community organizer, legal services lawyer and strategist, Gordon has helped working families build strong and effective community organizations for 18 years. A lawyer, he is the author of Making Accountability Work in the New...

Gordon Whitman is Director of Policy for PICO National Network. As a community organizer, legal services lawyer and strategist, Gordon has helped working families build strong and effective community organizations for 18 years. A lawyer, he is the author of Making Accountability Work in the New York University Review of Law and Social Change (2003), Teaching Inequality: The Problem of Public School Tracking in Harvard Law Review (1987) and policy studies on U.S. school reform, urban credit markets, housing policy and international education reform. He has taught the History and Theory of Community Organizing as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and has a BA in Urban Studies and History from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Harvard Law School. As a community organizer, legal services lawyer and strategist, Gordon has helped working families build strong and effective community organizations for 18 years. Gordon began organizing in Philadelphia in 1992 as the co-founder of the Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project, where he directed successful organizing campaigns to improve low-performing public schools, reverse bank redlining and revitalize housing in urban neighborhoods. He served as Director of Research for Democracy and the Associate Director of the Center for Public Policy at Temple University, where he conducted research projects on racial and socio-economic disparities in access to high quality teachers; economic models for eliminating blight and revitalizing neighborhoods; the impact of suburban sprawl on faith institutions; and teacher and parent attitudes toward school governance and decision-making. He was also the founding organizer of Flint Area Congregations Together, a PICO affiliate in Flint, Michigan. A lawyer, he is the author of Making Accountability Work in the New York University Review of Law and Social Change (2003), Teaching Inequality: The Problem of Public School Tracking in Harvard Law Review (1987) and policy studies on U.S. school reform, urban credit markets, housing policy and international education reform. He has taught the History and Theory of Community Organizing as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and has a BA in Urban Studies and History from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Harvard Law School.