Eugenio “Owen” K. Smith

Director of Base-Building Capacity

Eugenio serves as Director of Base-Building Capacity at MVP, where they lead a program dedicated to helping organizations achieve their goals through sustainable organizing, power-building, and leadership development. In this role, Eugenio works directly with grassroots groups, connecting them to resources and providing coaching on base-building methodologies that center each organization's unique needs, values, and vision of power.

Drawing on over two decades of experience in community organizing, legislative advocacy, and electoral campaigns across the country, Eugenio brings deep firsthand knowledge of the challenges facing social justice organizations. Eugenio's background includes serving as field director, program director, founder, and executive director at organizations similar to those MVP serves — giving them unique insight into what it takes to meet funder goals while building genuine community power. This lived experience informs MVP's approach: flipping traditional capacity-building models on their head to prioritize what groups actually need to win significant, self-defined victories in policy, their communities, and at the ballot box.

Eugenio's organizing career spans statewide "Equality" organizations, including campaigns that elected fair-minded officials and passed landmark legislation, such as the Dream Act, marriage equality, and non-discrimination laws. They also worked at a regional Pacific Northwest organization supporting coalitions advancing reproductive justice, environmental justice, and health equity through legislative and electoral strategies. For slightly more than the last decade, Eugenio has focused on philanthropic capacity-building programs that support social justice organizations in growing stronger. They founded and served as director or co-director at organizations including Team Trans, The Charm City Boys, and Transforming Strategic Direction.

Born in the Midwest into an eclectic family of strong women, Eugenio was introduced to organizing early — their union-organizing mother brought them to picket lines in a stroller with a small picket sign of their own. That early exposure to the power of collective action shaped a lifelong commitment to helping people come together to create change.

Now based in the South, Eugenio can be found whale- or turtle-watching on the beach, or walking through forests, bird-watching with their dogs, Dashel and Johnny Cash.