Nathaniel Smith

Founder and Chief Equity Officer, Partnership for Southern Equity

Nathaniel Smith serves as Founder and Chief Equity Officer (CEqO)/CEO) of the Partnership for Southern Equity. Empowered by the unified vision and voices realized through its regional engagement efforts, PSE pushes for policies and actions that promote balanced growth and inclusive prosperity in metropolitan Atlanta and beyond. Among PSE’s notable accomplishments were creating the American South’s first equity mapping and framing tool, the Metro Atlanta Equity Atlas (MAEA); The Atlanta Regional Commission’s Equitable Target Areas (ETA) mapping index to promote and measure equitable land-use planning efforts; supporting the creation of the nation’s first “Equitable Development Plan” for a large-scale neighborhood transformation project—The Atlanta Beltline; and convening the inaugural Equity Atlanta Forum on the equitable utilization of Federal Stimulus Funding in metro Atlanta as well as its supporting document, co-written by PolicyLink, “Recovering Stronger: Building an Inclusive Metro Atlanta Economy.” Mr. Smith is also the co-author of PSE’s 2016 report, “Growing the Future: The Case for Economic Inclusion in Metropolitan Atlanta,” as well as “Opportunity Deferred: Race, Transportation, and the Future of Metropolitan Atlanta.” In 2014 PSE led a coalition of diverse stakeholders and organizations to support the initiation and passage of a $13 million transit referendum that expands Atlanta’s metropolitan transit system (MARTA) into a new county (Clayton) for the first time in 45 years.