Kim Smith

Kim Smith is an innovator and serial social entrepreneur. Founder of the Pahara Institute where she focused on strengthening and sustaining diverse high integrity change makers and leaders. Immediately prior she co-founded Bellwether Education Partners. Earlier she was a founding team member at Teach For America created an AmeriCorps program for community-based leaders in youth development led a trade show start-up and did a stint in online learning at Silicon Graphics. She co-founded NewSchools Venture Fund a philanthropy focused on catalyzing a bipartisan cross-sector community of entrepreneurial change agents for public education. She is widely recognized as an entrepreneurial leader in education and was featured in Newsweek’s “Women of the 21st Century” as “the kind of woman who will shape America’s new century.”Kim has served on a range of boards currently: Pahara NewSchools Lone Rock and Institute for Citizens and Scholars. Previous Boards: GreatSchools Carnegie Learning TeachScape LearnNow Rocketship Education East Bay Innovation Academy among others. Kim has authored “What Is Educational Entrepreneurship?” “Creating Responsive Supply in Education” “Innovation in Education: Problems and Opportunities” “Supporting and Scaling Change” and “Steering Capital.” A Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and currently Entrepreneur in Residence at Cambiar Education she lives in CA with her husband & two daughters.