Robert Smith
Senior Program Officer, Thriving Cultures at Grantmakers in the Arts
New York, New York, United States
Summary
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Senior🎓
Top SchoolRobert Smith III is a Senior Program Officer leading a $10M Thriving Cultures portfolio at the Surdna Foundation, where he blends grantmaking, learning strategy, and cross-sector partnerships to mobilize artists and culture workers toward racial justice. With a decade of experience across museums, arts institutions, and LGBTQ organizations—including leadership roles at the National Public Housing Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and OutRight Action International—he specializes in cultural programming that centers historical knowledge and radical imagination. He brings an academic grounding in Africana Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies (Brown) and American Studies/Art History (University of Minnesota) to policy-facing philanthropy. Known for translating visionary critique into fundable, transformational practice, Robert is equally comfortable convening funders or supporting grassroots cultural work. His board service and advisory roles reflect a commitment to youth, LGBTQ communities, and institutional arts strategy beyond his day job. Born and raised in South Florida, he pairs regional perspective with national influence, and maintains a side interest in data science and public-facing writing as thedatascienceguy.com.
10 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Arts - MA American Studies Art History, Master of Arts - MA American Studies Art History at University of MinnesotaBachelor of Arts - BA Africana Studies Gender and Sexuality Studies, Bachelor of Arts - BA Africana Studies Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brown UniversityNova High SchoolSemester in South Africa, Semester in South Africa at CIEE Council on International Educational Exchange
Github Skills (4)
machine-learning-models9
python8
machine-learning8
data-science7
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
smit5490/CustomerChurn
Jan 2018 - Sep 2020
Contributions:14 commits, 13 pushes, 1 branch in 2 years 7 months
smit5490/Getting-CleaningData
Nov 2015 - Aug 2017
Contributions:16 pushes, 1 branch in 1 year 8 months
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