About

Gerald Totten is a member of the Chatham County Board of Education. He was elected in November 2006.

Gerald Totten has lived in Chatham County and the Board of Education’s District 4 since 1985. He and his wife, Barbara, built their own home on acreage in the Mt. Vernon Springs area and occupied it in January 1987. Gerald is the owner of S.T. Planning Company, his management consulting firm. He also is a timber grower in agribusiness.

He was born in California but spent most of his youth in Texas. He completed his high school education while in the United States Marine Corps, completed his studies for a bachelor’s degree in management and has had advanced degree work through the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and at the Navy War College campus at Newport, Rhode Island. He was commissioned from the rank of Staff Sergeant through the Marine Corps’ Meritorious Non-commissioned Officer program as a Second Lieutenant and retired from active duty as a Colonel with almost 31 years of faithful service. Since his first retirement, Totten has worked for industry in turn-around management assignments moving troubled companies into profitable ones. He has been in plant supervisory roles in the manufacture of commercial buildings for such owners as Shell Oil, Exxon, British Petroleum, Standard Oil and Texaco. Gerald was also project manager in the upgrading and remodeling of manufacturing plants in Siler City and in Albemarle, North Carolina, for a major manufacturer. He has been a business management instructor at Central Carolina Community College for several years as well.

Totten has contributed his time and abilities by being active in a number of Chatham County advisory committees and boards.

Gerald’s local efforts include: Chair – District 3’s Board of Education School Bond Advisory committee, Hazardous Waste Identification and Safety committee, the Nuclear Waste Storage Site committee, the Landfill Siting committee and a four county job training Private Industry Council where he served as the chair for two years – an unprecedented selection by the Council. In addition he was one of the founding members of The Triad Quality Forum, an organization made up of quality management professionals in the Chatham, Randolph, Forsyth, Alamance and Guilford counties.

In recognition of that effort, he was appointed to former Governor Jim Hunt’s High Performance Workforce Team Development committee.