Jeffrey Smith is the founding director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit organization that builds and supports successful free and fair election campaigns across the African continent. He is a veteran human rights campaigner, writer, and consultant who has advised several African presidents as well as dozens of pro-democracy opposition leaders from across the continent. In addition, he is the co-creator and host of The Resistance Bureau, a monthly program that spotlights the leaders at the forefront of the global struggle for freedom and democracy.Mr. Smith has well over a decade of experience building democracy promotion and human rights advocacy campaigns, including prior leadership positions at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Freedom House, National Endowment for Democracy, Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa, and UNESCO. He has been honored multiple times for his work, including by the Government of The Gambia as a Champion of Democracy in 2017 and was named among the Top 40 Under 40 Professionals by the Washington Business Journal in 2018. He has led, planned, and conducted human rights assessment missions to a number of African countries and has organized high-profile delegations -- including for African heads of state -- to the White House, Department of State, U.S. Congress, and the United Nations Human Rights Council.He has written extensively on issues pertaining to democracy and U.S. foreign policy for premier international publications, including the Washington Post, Time Magazine, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, The Africa Report, as well as the Journal of Democracy, among others. He is often quoted, and his work cited, by major media publications and has provided on-air analysis for outlets as varied as the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Public Radio International, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera.He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, where he received a masters degree in international relations with honors in 2007. Today, he remains active in the campus community, including serving on the Board of Overseers at the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. He is also a founding board member of the Solo Sandeng Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Banjul, Gambia that seeks to propagate knowledge and understanding of the core values and legacy of slain youth activist Solo Sandeng.