People

Vanessa Smith is from the suburbs of Chicago, IL and currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her Master’s in Genetic Counseling from Vanderbilt University in 2025 and will begin her career in research at the Leukodystrophy Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Vanessa is passionate about rare disease and neurogenetics. Her current research focuses on the selection and evaluation of patient-centered clinical outcome assessment for a rare neurodegenerative disorder, Beta-Propellor Protein-Associated Neurodegeneration.