DRIVEN TO SERVE

CSG alumna Robin Smith ’12 is passionate about helping those at home and abroad

This past spring, Robin Smith ’12 spent two weeks in Poland helping communities learn how to better serve the Ukrainian refugees fleeing from war with Russia.

Smith spent a week in Lublin and then another week in Warsaw. Though she helped instruct teachers and school administrators in providing trauma-informed care to an influx of students, Smith also worked with individual community members interested in providing supplies and housing to refugees.

“I think I was struck by how many regular Polish citizens were doing the work,” she said.

Smith’s trip to Poland is just one example of her commitment to serving others, both at home and abroad. As she grew into adulthood, she forged a future for herself heavily influenced by a love for international study as well as leadership and philanthropy. She credits CSG with supporting her by providing foundational skills as well as the flexibility to pursue life-changing educational experiences.

Smith, who attended CSG beginning in the Program for Young Children, said her education helped her learn how to be assertive as well as how to ask for help. Certain projects and opportunities also helped foster interests that would influence her career path. In Form VII, Smith worked with other students to write grant proposals addressing issues in specific countries they’d researched. Throughout Upper School, she was involved with the Service Club, serving as Co-President her senior year. For her Senior May Program, Smith interned at the Columbus Foundation.

Smith was also grateful for her participation in a YWCA program called Bright Futures, in which she learned foundational leadership skills with other central Ohio students. CSG nominated her and also provided the funding for her participation in the program, which was held one weekend per month over the course of Smith’s junior year.

“I think about that experience a lot, even today,” she said.

While Smith spent much of her formative years exploring her passion for service, she also learned how much she enjoyed traveling to and studying places outside the U.S. During her sophomore year at CSG, she was an exchange student in Ecuador. The summer before her junior year, she got a job to pay for a trip to Moscow to visit her host family from Ecuador (who had moved there because her host dad worked at the Russian Embassy). That trip inspired her to spend a year in Russia after graduating from CSG.

Smith went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian and Political Science from The Ohio State University and a Master of Arts degree in Applied Psychology from the University of Washington. Now living in Seattle, she works for a dialectical behavioral therapy clinic as a mental health therapist. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith volunteered as a behavioral health first responder in Seattle to work with children affected by the pandemic suffering from child abuse, traumatic grief, anxiety, and depression.

As volunteer efforts developed abroad in response to the war between Ukraine and Russia, Smith was asked to deploy with psychologists and psychiatrists from the University of Washington, Seattle University, and National Center for School Mental Health because of her experience living and working in that part of the world. (She lived in Russia and then worked in Kyrgyzstan.) Though that trip has concluded, Smith continues to volunteer in Seattle on behalf of refugees abroad.

Working with Jewish Family Services, Smith is assisting refugees applying for asylum in the U.S. She’s also part of a virtual exchange program sponsored by America House Kyiv/ IREX to share resources with medical providers living in Ukraine.

Smith said her service work has given her the opportunity to see the ways in which those from different countries help each other. The experiences have shown her just how adaptable people can be in finding ways to survive.