Heather Smith

In 2008, Smith led Rock the Vote to achieve its highest voter registration numbers in the organization’s 20-year history - 2.2 million individuals used Rock the Vote’s tools to register to vote. During the historic election season, Rock the Vote ran the largest non-partisan voter registration campaign in history that saw 22 million young voters cast a ballot. Smith appeared on NBC News, the Today Show, FOX News, CNN, NPR, BBC and other major news outlets in the US and around the world.

Prior to taking over Rock the Vote, Smith founded and directed Young Voter Strategies, a nonpartisan project in partnership with The Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Young Voter Strategies provided the public, parties, candidates, consultants and nonprofits with data and research on the youth vote as well as best practices to effectively mobilize young people. In 2006, Smith and Young Voter Strategies coordinated the nation’s largest non-partisan project to register young voters using innovative and replicable methods of voter outreach. The project registered over 540,000 youth ages 18-30 and played a large role in the young voter turnout increase in 2006.

In 2004 Smith served as national field director for the Student PIRGs New Voters Project, the largest nonpartisan grassroots effort ever undertaken to register and mobilize young voters. Across the country, the New Voters Project, under Smith’s direction, registered nearly 600,000 voters and conducted an intensive, multi-faceted get-out-the-vote effort to bring these newly registered voters to the polls on Election Day. Youth turnout was 11 percentage points higher than in 2000.

Prior to her work at the New Voters Project, Smith was an organizing director for Green Corps’ Field School for Environmental Organizing in Boston. Smith received a B.A. with honors in economics and public policy from Duke University. In 2006, Smith was named one of Campaign & Elections magazine’s Rising Stars for her work with young voters. She has also been named one of Esquire Magazine’s Best and Brightest of 2007. Follow Smith on Twitter @rtvHS.