Stephen Noble Smith grew up in West Virginia and Texas before attending Harvard University. There, he started a Boston-area student volunteer group, hosted a national 1600-person activism conference, and helped win a living wage for campus janitors after a 21-day takeover of the University President's offices. After school, he went to Botswana to lend a hand in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Despite some successes, he left Botswana convinced that power must be built from the ground-up, not bestowed from do-gooding outsiders.
When he returned to the United States, he met Ed Chambers, the director of the U.S.'s oldest and largest community organizing network. Ed hired Stephen to build a young adult-led community coalition in Chicago - the first of its kind. Ed's warning on day one: "I don't fire people for making mistakes; I fire people for not making mistakes." The next four years, Stephen built PACT into an award-winning community organization in Chicago - one mistake at a time. Stoking the Fire of Democracy is a "personal guide to community organizing" colored by the stories and lessons from those four years.
Smith wrote Stoking the Fire of Democracy in London, while earning his Masters Degree in Comparative Politics and teaching a community organizing course at CITY University London.
He now lives in Chicago with his wife, Sara Whitaker. He runs Sweet Miss Giving's, a bakery and jobs program that helps the homeless. If you've got a sweet tooth, Stephen highly recommends the pecan bars, cream cheese brownies, red velvet cupcakes, and zucchini walnut bread :)
Listen to Stephen's interview on NPR
Before Barack Obama became President of the U.S., he was a community organizer in Chicago. Obama generated a renewed interest in activism which inspired Stephen Smith to write a guidebook for young people interested in affecting change. Alison Cuddy spoke with Smith who said: “I am an organizer because first I was a loser.”