Accelerating Education

Photo by Marshall University.

For Brad Smith, home is where the heart is, and his heart has always been among the hills of Appalachia.

Smith grew up in the small town of Kenova, WV, and was raised on southern hospitality, a humble attitude and a deeply rooted sense of honesty that he says is unique to the Appalachian people.

“I had an idyllic childhood—two wonderful parents and two brothers—and I’ve had friends that have lasted a lifetime. I couldn’t have wished for a better upbringing,” he says. “Integrity is a true West Virginia trait. We still do business on a handshake, and we mean what we say.”

With a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Marshall University and a master’s in management from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI, Smith began working for global technology platform Intuit in 2003. Quickly working his way up the corporate ladder through his home-grown integrity and keen communication skills, Smith was named CEO of the company in 2008, where he served in this position for an entire decade.

“My role at Intuit was to create an environment where the world’s greatest talent could do the best work of their lives,” he says.

Soon after Smith took over, Intuit saw its customer base grow to nearly 50 million and the company’s stocks jumped by an astounding 588%. Fortune magazine recognized Smith as one of the country’s best CEOs in 2016 and listed Intuit as one of the world’s best places to work.

“Leadership is the ability to inspire others to achieve shared objectives,” he says.

For Smith, leadership is less about leading and more about serving others and providing employees with the opportunity and the environment to function at their highest potential.

“A piece of wisdom my father gave me that I never lost sight of is when he said, ‘The first thing you want to do is the thing that makes your heart beat the fastest,’ and I found that it was serving people,” Smith says.

While Smith accrued great success in Silicon Valley, his heart never left West Virginia, and today he serves as the 38th president of his alma mater, Marshall University. He is proudly serving his community with the same leadership, tenacity and passion of those who came before him, pulling from his upbringing the values that he hopes to inspire in others—integrity, humility and teamwork. Describing his experience as the privilege of a lifetime, Smith looks forward to pushing Marshall University ahead on a trajectory of continued success through the implementation of new programs and initiatives.

“We have studied the universities that are doing the best. They’re growing their enrollment, their graduation and retention rates are improving, and their students are getting jobs and landing in careers they’re excited about,” says Smith. “When you study exemplars, they have three things in common: they’re teaching an in-demand curriculum; they’re teaching on-demand, which means they also offer the ability to take school online or in an asynchronous fashion; and then there are three to five areas where they can be distinct. They’re not trying to be all things to all people.”

Among many of his administrative plans is the Marshall for All, Marshall Forever strategy.

“Marshall for All is expanding on who we plan to serve beyond high school students to include 10 different student cohorts. They will include working parents, military veterans, you name it,” he says. “We’re also expanding the definition of education. It’s not just four-year degrees, master’s degrees and doctorates, it’s aviation maintenance and technicians as well.”

As part of this strategy, Smith outlines his comprehensive goal of having every student at Marshall graduate completely debt-free within the next decade.

“Students will complete the required FAFSA form every year. Their families will try to contribute what they can; we will take them through a financial literacy course, so they know how to manage their money; and then we’re going to help them get into work-study programs or part-time jobs,” he says. “That’s the way we’re trying to both advance education and the economy because they’ll get part-time jobs through the state or local employers, and hopefully, they’ll stay here and want to be part of the next chapter of growing West Virginia.”

This goal is set to begin its first trial run in the fall of 2023 with a group of 100 students. It plans to make groundbreaking strides in the accessibility of higher education.

“When you think about what Marshall does, we are a platform that accelerates individual success. We accelerate innovative ideas, and we accelerate economic impact in our state and region,” says Smith.

Another testament to his dedication to increasing opportunity for all, Smith and his wife, Alys, co-founded the Wing 2 Wing Foundation, an initiative that launched in 2021 with the goal of cultivating the abundance of untouched and unrecognized potential that resides in the Mountain State. Getting its name from the Luciano De Crescenzo quote stating, “We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another,” the foundation seeks to embrace the people of West Virginia through its investments in education, entrepreneurship and the environment.

“Many in Appalachia, and in particular in West Virginia, find the need or the desire to leave the state and go look for their passion or their job someplace else,” Smith says. “So, we wanted to level the playing field of opportunity, and we saw three ways to do that: through education, entrepreneurship and the environment.”

The couple recently donated $25 million to West Virginia University (WVU) through the WVU Foundation to increase educational opportunities and attract new talent to the state.

A Son of Marshall turned president, Smith looks forward to continuing the legacy of his predecessors and advocating for the people of West Virginia. With an ever-growing list of impressive accomplishments and cutting-edge visions for the future, Smith keeps himself grounded by remembering the humble upbringing that took him across the country only to eventually bring him back home.

“I learned from my parents how to be a good person, a good human being, and I try to live up to that standard every day,” he says.