Councilmember's Bio:

Odette is Puerto Rican and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, coming to Baltimore in 1991 to attend Goucher College. She has a long history of living in the 14th District. She currently lives in Charles Village, and has lived in the Coldstream Homestead Montebello, Tuscany Canterbury, and Abell neighborhoods. She lives with an 8-year-old daughter and her husband, John Spurrier.

Odette served as Student Government President at Goucher College for three years and graduated with honors in a self-created major called Social Justice. Odette then earned her Master's of Science in Public Policy from the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University.

After graduate school, Odette returned to Maryland to work for then-Del. Jim Campbell in the Maryland House of Delegates and then-U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski. She worked as the neighborhood programs director for Greater Homewood Community Corporation, where she led the Neighborhood Congress in 1998. After that, she became the founding director for the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. She started her own consulting firm, Strategic Management Consulting, in 2005 where she worked with nonprofits and small businesses to help them be more efficient and effective.

Odette was hired as the executive director of the Community Development Network of Maryland in 2013, recently leaving the organization to be a full time City Council person.

Odette has been very involved in her community. She was a co-founder of the Village Learning Place in 1997, a community-run library and learning center that emerged from the old St. Paul Street Library. She served as president of the Abell Improvement Association in 2005 and chair of the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce from 2007 to 2009.

As a new mom in 2012, she founded two playgroups in Charles Village, the Sing-Along Playgroup and Mother Goose on the Loose at the 29th Street Community Center. Odette is the former board chair of the Baltimore Community Mediation Center and founding Chair for the Fair Housing Action Center of Maryland. Odette served on the board of the Urban Children Foundation, Civic Works, and Waverly Main Street. Odette was elected to the Democratic State Central Committee representing legislative District 43 in 2014 served one and a half terms, and recently resigned to focus on her council work. Odette is the co-founder and former co-chair of Baltimore Women United, a volunteer women's group founded after the 2016 election to elect more women to public office, activate women in the political process, and organize Baltimore’s Women’s Marches. 

Odette's recent professional accomplishments include leading the passage of the Baltimore City Affordable Housing Trust Fund ballot initiative and numerous pieces of legislation in the Maryland General Assembly to address vacant and blighted properties, as well as to protect homeowners from predatory tax sale.

She was recognized as one of The Baltimore Sun’s “Women to Watch” in 2020, and as an Influential Marylander by the Daily Record in 2019. BNI Maryland honored her with the Dickens Warfield Award in 2017 for her advocacy for justice in housing. Odette is also a graduate of the 2019 Emerge Maryland class.