Heather Smith

Heather Smith has served as Executive Director of Rock the Vote since 2007. Under Smith's leadership, in 2008 Rock the Vote is launching its most ambitious campaign ever to register 2 million young people to vote, to educate them, and to turn them out to the polls. 

Prior to Rock the Vote, Smith founded and directed Young Voter Strategies (YVS), a nonpartisan effort supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts to re-energize our democracy through developing tools, data and information for political campaigns and organizations to effectively run their own young voter programs. In 2006, YVS coordinated a national nonpartisan project with 15 organizations that collectively registered more than 500,000 young voters using innovative and replicable methods of voter outreach and played a large role in the young voter turnout increase in 2006. Prior to launching YVS, Smith served as the national field director for the PIRGs New Voters Project, the largest nonpartisan grassroots effort ever undertaken to register and mobilize young voters. "The New Voters Project" 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. Smith started her organizing career with Green Corps, a Field School for Environmental Organizing.

For her work with young voters, Heather was named one of Campaign & Elections magazine's Rising Stars in 2006 and featured in an Esquire magazine profile of the "Best & Brightest" in 2007.

About Rock the Vote: www.rockthevote.com/rtv_about.php