UC LGBTQ Center founder takes on new diversity role

When Leisan Smith, ’99, ME ’03, began work this year as the inaugural Chief Equity Officer at the prestigious Columbus School for Girls, the school’s staff and faculty were thrilled. The job description, they said, “was written for you.”

Smith, who is African American, a member of the LGBTQ community, and the mother of a 6-year-old daughter, brings to the role a life steeped in diversity and a richly varied career path that has intersected with education at every point along the way. Her past experience includes serving as the founding director of UC’s LGBTQ Center from 2010 to 2015.

At the private Columbus School for Girls, located in the historic, tree-lined suburb of Bexley, Smith is overseeing a range of initiatives. One of her primary tasks is to advance the recommendations of an anti-racism task force that covers several areas, including recruiting and hiring, curriculum evaluation, as well as programs and traditions.

“We want to make sure the curriculum is inclusive of specific diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) learning standards,” Smith said. “We’re also looking at our programs and traditions, because at an independent school, there are a lot of them. We want to ensure that they are inclusive of all members of our community, and we want to explore how might we re-imagine those if they’re not.”

As an undergraduate in the UC College of Arts and Sciences, Smith spent most of her time outside the classroom at the African American Cultural Resource Center (AACRC), her future in the LGBTQ community not yet clear to her. “I was coming out to myself, figuring that piece out,” she said. “And then, once I graduated with my bachelor’s, that’s when I was like, oh, OK, and at that time I identified as a lesbian; I identify as queer now. So that was something I had to work through.”

Coming out to people who were close to her proved another challenge, and it strengthened her decision to stay in Cincinnati after graduation. “I knew I needed to have some space to figure out who I was,” Smith said. “I had friends who were extremely supportive; I had folks in my life I thought were friends who were not as supportive. Overall, the experience was pretty good, and for some people in my life it was less about me being a lesbian and more about, ‘Oh my goodness, I didn’t see this coming.’”

Following graduation, Smith worked at UC’s AACRC for a year, then the YMCA in Cincinnati. In 2001, the director of UC’s Women’s Center suggested she apply for a new graduate assistant position. “I told her I’m not in grad school, and she said, ‘Then I think you need to apply for grad school.’ And I said, OK, I guess I’m going to grad school!” Two years later, Smith had her master’s in education.

Positions at the YWCA and the Upward Bound program at Mount St. Joseph University followed, and in 2010 UC hired Smith to expand the LGBTQ Center. Under her leadership, the center moved from a small, cramped space in the Steger Student Life Center to a large office suitable for gatherings and small events. Smith and her staff stepped up LGBTQ awareness training across campus so that more students felt included, and she reached out purposefully to students of color. 

LGBTQ spaces are frequently seen “as white spaces, unless they are designated for queer folks of color,” Smith said. “That was something we were very intentional about. UC had a Student Life Department that included the Women’s Center, the AACRC and Ethnic Programs & Services (EPS). As Director of the LGBTQ Center, I worked closely with the director of EPS and the director of AACRC to talk about how we could bridge this gap. Because we found that for some queer students of color, they didn’t feel like AACRC or EPC were spaces for them either. If they were in those spaces, they didn’t feel they were able to show up as their authentic selves. We started doing programming together, and I made sure to spend time in the AACRC and in EPS to make sure students knew who I was and what I did on campus.”