Rhonda M. Smith

Rhonda M. Smith is the Founder of Breast Cancer Partner, an organization that focuses on breast cancer recovery through health and wellness and taking a more integrative and holistic approach to recovery. Breast Cancer Partner provides tools, resources and information to help breast cancer survivors recover, restore and reenergize themselves after treatment. The organization’s mission is to function as a "partner" to breast cancer survivors (and their families) who are nearing the end of or have completed treatment, on their journey to recovery, or who are cancer free.

Through her work, Rhonda’s goal is to help breast cancer survivors effectively cope with and manage life during and post-treatment, empower them to become their own health and wellness advocate and adopt a lifestyle and practices aimed at cancer prevention and survival. Ultimately, Rhonda wants to create a world in which each and every breast cancer survivor lives a life that is full of vitality, cancer-free and without fear, so that recovery is a life-enhancing rather than a life-limiting event.

Rhonda appeared in the October 2010 issue of More Magazine as a first runner-up in the More’s Beauty Search Contest based on her essay “Why This is the Most Fabulous Time in My Life”. The essay was about her breast cancer journey and how she has emerged from that experience with a new identity and sense of passion and purpose. Most recently, Rhonda was chosen to participate on the Merz Aesthtics’ expert advisory panel for their “Stand and Deliver Program”, a national initiative that recognizes women who stand up for a cause they believe in and have an impact in their community. Rhonda will also be profiled and recognized as a woman who stands and delivers on the More Magazine Reinvention TV Show in November 2011.

With more than 20 years of experience that includes sales and marketing management and learning and development consulting, Rhonda has parlayed her professional and personal experience into a unique skill set that includes creating survivorship programs for breast cancer centers, and health and wellness experiences, events and products for breast cancer survivors.

Rhonda earned her MBA in marketing and operations management from the Colgate Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and her B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech. She is the Immediate Past-Chair of the Board of The Women’s Fund of Miami-Dade and a CEO Forum member of The Commonwealth Institute of the South Florida. Rhonda served on the 2007 NFL Super Bowl Special Events Committee and, in 2006, was named one of the South Florida’s “25 Most Prominent and Influential African-American Women by Success South Florida Magazine.