Fran Smith is a nationally recognized editor and writer with a Pulitzer Prize on her resume, and a communication strategist, coach and public speaker. She is also the award-winning author of two nonfiction books. She has had many jobs but only one mission: telling stories that make the world a better place.
As a newspaper reporter for many years, Fran exposed fraud and wrongdoing in hospitals and nursing homes, profiled power brokers and unsung heroes, and shined the light on achievements that most of the media ignored — the teacher, teen, nurse, artist, advocate, ex-convict, scientist making a difference in their community, often against all odds. She founded Fran Smith Media to help people and organizations tell their own stories, with clarity, authenticity and power.
Fran’s articles have appeared in hundreds of newspapers and dozens of magazines and websites including O: The Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Salon, Forbes, Prevention, Psychology Today, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. She has won numerous awards for feature writing, investigative reporting and editing, and shared a Pulitzer for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area. She edited a magazine and wrote an influential guidebook for journalists. She is the co-author (with Sheila Himmel) of Changing the Way We Die, an Amazon bestseller and winner of an Independent Book Publishers Award; and Breaking Ground: the History of the YWCA in the Santa Clara Valley. Learn more about Fran’s journalism here.
“Fran is the consummate professional. Her exceptional attention to detail is rare nowadays, and her reliability and resourcefulness are a project manager’s dream-come-true. Fran is the kind of editor writers appreciate, and the kind of writer editors love to hire. Every word is where it belongs, every story well researched (and then some!) and well told. What more could you ask for?
Eileen Livers
Co-Founder, She & Me LLC
Fran has a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University, a Master of Journalism from U.C. Berkeley and she was the recipient of a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She lives in New York with her husband, daughter and Labradoodle. She is an active community volunteer and has served on the board of her local public schools foundation. In her free time, she loves to hike, travel, tap dance and roam around NYC.