As a veteran journalist and administrator in corporate, non-profit and academic arenas, Byron P. White has spent his career facilitating mutually beneficial engagement and understanding between institutions and communities. Currently, he is associate vice president for community engagement at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and the founding executive director of the university’s James and Delrose Eigel Center for Community-Engaged Learning.
Before joining Xavier’s staff in 2002, Byron was senior manager of community relations for the Chicago Tribune, where he oversaw community engagement strategies and diversity marketing efforts. His work earned him the Newspaper Association of America’s prestigious “20 Under 40” leadership award. Byron had previously served as editor of the Tribune’s Urban Affairs Team and a writer on the newspaper’s editorial board. Until 1992, he was the editorial page editor of The Cincinnati Post, where he won Associated Press honors for his work.
Between newspaper stints in Cincinnati and Chicago, Byron served as executive director of the Conference of Walnut Hills Churches, a non-profit coalition of 18 congregations in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills neighborhood that worked together on housing and education initiatives. He also was a consultant to community-based organizations on Chicago’s West Side and in other cities, working in conjunction with the Asset-Based Community Development Institute, on whose faculty he serves.
Byron is an adjunct faculty member at Xavier University and has served on the adjunct faculty of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism graduate program. He serves on the Greater Cincinnati Foundation’s Community & Economic Development Advisory Committee and sits on the Director’s Advisory Board of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He is an alumnus of Leadership Greater Chicago and Leadership Cincinnati.
Byron has a doctoral degree from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in social science from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University. He continues to publish articles and consult with community groups and institutions on institutional-community engagement, community-media relations, asset-based community development, and diversity marketing.
Byron lives in Cincinnati’s North Avondale neighborhood with his wife, Vanessa, and their five children.