people & partners

The Collective includes an immediate family of experienced collaborators and, indirectly, a constantly expanding universe of professional and social communities: marketing, PR and creative professionals, writers and editors, grassroots groups, nonprofit professionals, artists and creatives, activists and culture shapers.

Scott Tillitt
Founder

Scott is a connector — of dots and people. At times — often at the same time — throughout his 25-plus year career he has been a strategist, publicist, marketer, social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, community catalyst and writer. He has a broad perspective working in various culture-shaping (and sometimes suffocating) worlds — advertising, media, interactive design, photography, technology, television and fashion — before applying his corporate skills to social impact.

Some years ago, catalyzed by 9/11 and an ongoing process of spiritual and social awakening, he broke the trance of an increasingly cynical consumer culture and started working towards positive, impactful change. He has an insatiable interest in transforming failed systems, in big ideas and the behaviors that drive people, what resonates with them, and how to engage them. Basically, he aims to ignite the mind, tickle the emotions, and stir the soul of his fellow humans.

In his new incarnation, he worked with Josh Baran on the media relations for the 2003 New York visit of the Dalai Lama, handling various press events and nearly 500 foreign and domestic journalists from all forms of media.

He founded Antidote Collective in 2004 and has since worked with innovative nonprofits, foundations, citizen groups, social entrepreneurs and thinkers at the intersection of intersection of progressive issues, culture & community, media, socially responsible business and big ideas. He's helped dozens of clients on both US coasts and places in between, in Canada and Europe, and down under in Australia.

Those have included several subsequent US visits of the Dalai Lama, publicity for Phil Donahue’s anti-war film Body of War, PR for healthcare "whistleblower" Wendell Potter and groups like Rainforest Action Network, Common Future (then Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, or BALLE), Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and an indigenous community in Canada, branding for Rippel Foundation, strategic communications for the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation and Local Economies Project of the New World Foundation, and creative naming development for American Express and global visual rebranding support for Coca-Cola with Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide's famed design and innovation division Brand Integration Group (BIG).

In 2002 Scott spent a week in India with leading environmental and anti-globalization activist (and bona fide heroine) Vandana Shiva, fellow activist and editor Satish Kumar, Ela Gandhi (yes, that Gandhi — the Mahatma's granddaughter), and about a dozen others on a small research farm discussing Gandhi’s approach to nonviolence and personal and community self-sufficiency. It was a profound introduction to what we now call Localism (or Local Living Economies).

His personal antidotes are a strong meditation practice and holistic living, which keep him centered and positive and his mind agile and creative (relatively speaking). He lives with his two cats in Beacon, New York, just north of NYC in the verdant Hudson Valley.

Affiliations + Ventures

Current

• BEAHIVE / Founder
  a small network of Hudson Valley spaces for work and belonging partly inspired by the coworking and Localism movements

• Chronogram Foundation / Board of Advisors
  Chronogram has documented and connected the creative life of New York’s Hudson Valley for 30+ years — the Foundation exists to ensure that work remains independent, durable, and community-rooted

• The Highlands Current / Board of Directors

  award-winning, nonprofit media organization (with a free weekly print newspaper) covering New York’s Hudson Highlands communities (Philipstown and Beacon)

Past

• Re>Think Local / Co-founder + Board Chair
  nonprofit collaborative that educates and empowers locally owned independent businesses, organizations and citizens who care equally about people, planet and prosperity

• Good Work Institute / 2017 Fellow
  supports the work of a diverse community of local leaders, placemakers, and entrepreneurs in the Hudson Valley to build a regenerative and equitable local economy

• Social Venture Institute / Hudson Valley / Co-founder + Producer
  retreat for world-changing social entrepreneurs and innovative nonprofit leaders

• BeaconArts / Board Member
  nonprofit that has promoted and nurtured arts and culture in Beacon, NY, since 2002

• Progressive PR Professionals - PR/PR/PR / Steering Committee
  network of 1000-plus communicators