Leslie Mac

Leslie MacFadyen, known professionally as Leslie Mac, is an American activist and community organizer. She is a co-founder of the Ferguson Response Network, the co-creator of the Safety Pin Box monthly subscription service, and has created multiple digital campaigns such as #PayBlackWomen and #SlaveryWithASmile.

Career Mac attended Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism before she dropped out. She also worked as a trainer helping open the international locations of corporate restaurants chains, and later became an event planner.

In 2014, she began grassroots organizing with the help of Feminista Jones, with whom she organized a National Moment of Silence (#NMOS14) vigil in the wake of Michael Brown's shooting death in Ferguson, MO. Mac then founded the Ferguson Response Network in 2014 to help train people in peaceful protest, and transitioned into full-time organizing. She has helped organized events such as the Reclaim MLK March in Philadelphia on January 20, 2015. The idea was influenced by the popular safety pin concept developed by a woman in the UK who suggested wearing pins as a sign of solidarity to racial minorities after the Brexit vote. After media coverage of the event, Facebook restored her account and stated that the banning had been an error.

Personal life Mac was born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York to Jamaican immigrant parents. Voices of the Year, Impact Award, BlogHer (2017)