Jon Katov founded the Open Table organization in 2007 after meeting and forming a relationship with a man experiencing homelessness in 2005.
Jon Katov
Founder & CEO
Jon is a social enterprise builder and former senior advertising and marketing executive with thirty years experience developing and expanding community service and commercial innovations. As the founder and CEO of Open Table, Jon has spoken to thousands of people in the United States and from countries around the world about the Open Table story and how we can invest our relational and social capital in each other to help us all live the better lives we envision for ourselves.
Through the Open Table model, Jon has partnered with faith communities and agencies of the state and federal governments, as well as business, education, and healthcare to lead the development of a national shared purpose movement to grow the common good in communities. Jon recently founded the Center for Community Convening™, an organization of Open Table, that convenes multiple community sectors in shared purpose initiatives. Through the Community Convening model, business, faith communities, foundations, government, healthcare, media, service clubs, universities and other sectors co-invest their relational and social capital assets to expand Tables and develop innovative models to help solve social challenges.
Jon has a B.A. from the University of Illinois – Chicago where his studies focused on Latin American literature and advertising. His most important gift on the Open Table journey is his relationship with Ernie, through which he discovered the human purpose: to be for each other. Jon and his wife of thirty years live in Phoenix, Arizona.