Jo Smith

Senior Advisor

Jo is a senior advisor with the Sortition Foundation and co-founder of a Washington D.C. based consulting firm advising nonprofit and social impact leaders on strategy, operations, and sustainable scale.

After a successful corporate career, Jo pivoted to social impact work, volunteering with College Summit, and then spending 15 years there. As President & COO she led a significant transformation, rebranding it as PeerForward, a name chosen by its students, focusing the model on peer influence to drive college access and success outcomes. Under her leadership it expanded to 15 states, reaching 90,000 students annually by 2020, was honoured with a portion of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize and featured in National media including Stanford Social Innovation Review and The New York Times. She went on to advise the U.S. Peace Corps’ Chief of Operations and Office of the CIO, building local capacity across 3 Global regions supporting 3000+ volunteers in 60+ countries.

Jo believes lasting change happens when those closest to a problem have a voice and real responsibility, a conviction she brings to scaling citizens’ assemblies.

Outside work, Jo is usually immersed in a book of poetry, in an art museum, volunteering in her local nature conservancy, or on a travel adventure.