Georgie Smith

Georgie Smith is the Founder and President of A Sense of Home. Smith responded to a cry for help on social media by a young person who had aged out of foster care. Her random act of kindness spawned thousands of random acts of kindness giving birth to A Sense of Home.

Both Smith and her partner and co-founder, Melissa Goddard, met the 22-year-old man who had transitioned out of foster care into his first-ever apartment. They saw him in an empty apartment with nothing but trash bags containing his belongings, no furniture or household essentials, and no one to support him as he embarked upon the transition into adulthood. Recognizing both the immediate need and the broader systemic gap, Smith and Goddard mobilized volunteers and donated goods to transform his empty space into a fully furnished home. That single act created a ripple effect, leading hundreds of former foster youth to request support and inspiring thousands of volunteers and community leaders to contribute their time, resources, and compassion.

This organic movement was the first to address a critical and often overlooked issue: what happens after a young person secures housing, but they do not have the resources and support to sustain it. With her unique background in both design and production, Georgie Smith saw an opportunity to address the crisis by galvanizing the community to implement a sustainable solution. Smith’s vision centered around the science of creating a sense of home and a sense of belonging. She focused on creating a paradigm that would allow the broader community to step in and serve as an extended family to former foster youth.

Recognizing that up to 95% of foster youth have experienced trauma where home was not safe, and being in their first ever permanent home creates severe anxiety, hyper vigilance, and an inability to feel at home. Smith focused on creating a unique process that would allow ASOH recipients to experience “home” differently, and thereby rebuild trust, shift negative self-perceptions, and foster long-term emotional healing. In clinical psychology, this is known as a corrective emotional experience, a key factor in creating lasting positive behavioral and mental health outcomes.

Approximately 50% of the homeless population has experienced foster care, and nearly half of all youth aging out of foster care face immediate homelessness. 100% of them encounter furniture poverty. Smith found empirical evidence that a tenancy will fail if an occupant cannot turn their dwelling into a fully functioning home. Based on her research and experience in the early days of ASOH, she formulated that individuals and families require their home to house and organize hundreds of items that enable them to build a healthy and productive life. She observed that home is not merely a shelter, but rather a personal operating system that enables a human life to function successfully.

Identifying the most important essential items to sustain a healthy and productive life, the ASOH model crowdsources up to 330 prescreened & high quality items (that would otherwise destined for landfills) to be tailor selected and especially designed for each beneficiary. In only 90 minutes a home environment is created and installed by volunteers.

The evidence-based model, supported by ASOH’s proprietary custom-built software system, is designed to create an intentional, healing home environment, uniquely curated for each individual and family. The pioneering volunteer powered model unites the community, turning the act of furnishing a home into a collective healing experience.

By inviting each recipient to pay it forward, Smith witnessed recipients becoming a part of, and build community. Smith also saw additional opportunities for the broader community to organically lend their support, expertise and resources to former foster youth. Combining access to affordable housing and critical resources, creating homes, and providing an ongoing community of care, ASOH’s Three Step Pathway to Stability has demonstrated community collaboration in creating lasting outcomes, transforming the lives of 3,100+ foster youth and their families in Los Angeles to date while also scaling the grassroots organization to an $11 million nonprofit operation.

Within days of the outbreak of the 2025 LA fires, Smith conceived of and launched the ASOH Disaster Recovery Program to provide fully functioning home environments for community members who lost everything in the LA fires. To meet the moment, the unique ASOH systems were adapted and deployed to operate out of an additional 10,000 sq foot warehouse (in close proximity to Altadena). By fall 2026, the organization will have created 1,000 home environments, serving nearly one-sixth of the Altadena community impacted by the fires.

As ASOH looks to the future, the organization is poised for national expansion. In May 2026, ASOH launched a new chapter in New York City, where there is a great need to support the Nation’s second largest foster youth population.

Georgie Smith, has earned a number of honors including top 10 CNN Hero, House Beautiful’s “20 People Who Will Change the Design Industry,” a DVF Award nomination, a Shero Award nomination at the Women’s Choice Awards, and inclusion in the book and global exhibition 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World.