Prior to working with synED, he was Vice President and Chair of the Baccalaureate at Antioch University Santa Barbara. From 1976 until 2010, he was faculty and Dean at Santa Barbara City College. Responsible for the administration of the Business Division, the Scheinfeld Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the School of Media Arts which includes new media applications, game design, animation, film & television and journalism. For the past twenty-five years, Mr. Smith has been at the forefront of emerging information and communication technologies. Actively involved with the online information industry since its inception, he established Infomart Research, the first online information brokerage in California. As co-founder of Intellimation, a multimedia publishing company, he worked with software developers, publishers and content providers to distribute multimedia applications. For the past 15 years, Mr. Smith has managed and developed projects focusing on new media production, e-commerce and distribution, mobile media, and the use of game technologies in providing training and education. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the Economic and Workforce Development program from the State of California.

Having lived in Santa Barbara for 40 years, he is an active member of the community. Currently he serves on the Board of the MIT Enterprise Forum and New Beginnings.

He received his B.A. & M.A from San Diego State University before completing doctoral coursework in rhetoric and linguistics at the University of Southern California. He is married to Carola for twenty seven years with two children, Justin and Britta.