Darina Smith serves as Mercy For Animals' Chicago Outreach Coordinator, where she relentlessly organizes feed-ins, leafleting and tabling events, and demonstrations. She also leads MFA’s Restaurant Outreach program, meeting with restaurateurs to expand their vegan menu offerings. Darina is a finance professional with 8 years of leadership and operations experience, holding an MBA from University of Illinois at Chicago. She is fluent in multiple languages.

Originally from Slovakia, Darina was involved in many forms of activism from a very young age. At 21, after finishing her bachelor studies, she moved to the United States to pursue a business career. In 2008, inspired by MFA’s “How much cruelty can you swallow?” bus ad, Darina became active in farmed animal advocacy with MFA.

Alongside her career with a Fortune 500 company, Darina spends a great deal of her free time organizing creative group outreach events, as well as leafleting high schools, colleges, concerts and festivals. Via campus leafleting alone, in 2009 she individually reached roughly 10,000 students on 19 school campuses in 8 states. Through the Restaurant Outreach program, Darina reaches out to restaurants and food stores to create more vegan-friendly menus. As a recent result, Chicago’s “Baba’s Village” restaurant added a new and very successful vegan menu to its offerings, complete with entrées and soy milk shakes.