Rachael Smith, Membership Coordinator

Rachael Smith is originally from Florida, where she found a passion for involvement with the GLBT community as President of the Gay and Lesbian Students’ Organization at the University of Central Florida. While at UCF, she also began her event planning career in the Events Department of the UCF Student Center, where she helped student organizations plan everything from Mother/Daughter weekends to Take Back The Night fundraisers. Her love for event planning brought her to Atlanta in 2002 as a Conference Coordinator for Georgia State University. At GSU, she coordinated the primary meeting facility on campus and oversaw approximately 4,000 events annually.

In 2005, after she noticed a lack of femme representation in GLBT spaces, she founded Femme Mafia International, a community organization dedicated to creating increased visibility for femme-identified people within the GLBT community. Voted Local Female Hero by the readers of Southern Voice in 2007 and featured in Curve Magazine, The Advocate, the book “Femmes of Power”, Rachael helped change the landscape of lesbian nightlife for femmes and allies in Atlanta and beyond. Femme Mafia still boasts several chapters across the US and around the world, working to ensure a place of acceptance for femmes and their allies in the GLBT community. In 2008, she retired from leadership of Femme Mafia but she continues to serve in a support capacity for the organization’s remaining chapters. Rachael uses her experiences with Femme Mafia, UCF and GSU to speak on grassroots community organizing, visibility and identity politics, and microfundraising.

Rachael is currently pursuing a degree in Marketing from Georgia State University. She is particularly interested in studying the intersection of profit and not-for-profit ventures in community development and advocacy.