Smith’s session “Innovation and Workforce Needs of the 21st Century” is scheduled for Thursday morning. Marshall is a sponsor of the conference, which runs through Friday at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs.
“Brad Smith exemplifies everything that is good about West Virginia and Marshall University,” said Marshall Interim President Gary G. White. “Not only is he an inspiring leader for one of the world’s most exciting companies, he is generous and humble and everything his parents raised him to be. We’re looking forward to seeing him at the summit and hearing his take on the country’s workforce needs.”
Since 2012, Smith has headed the software corporation that makes Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax. Under his leadership, Intuit has cultivated an agile, experimentation culture, despite being a 30-year-old Silicon Valley company. This start-up mindset, combined with the ability to reinvent and transform itself along the way, has established Intuit as an innovative company that is consistently ranked as one of the top 100 best places to work, and among the most-admired software companies each year.
A native of Kenova, he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Marshall and a master’s degree in management from Aquinas College. Before working at Intuit, he held various sales, marketing and management positions at Pepsi, 7Up and ADVO. He joined Intuit in 2003 and was named president and CEO in January 2012. Since then, the company’s stock has nearly doubled. Intuit employs 8,000 people worldwide.
Marshall representatives participating in the conference include White; Dr. Haiyang Chen, dean of the College of Business; Dr. John Maher, vice president for research; Dr. Ron Area, CEO of the Marshall University Foundation; Ginny Painter, senior vice president for communications and marketing; and Charlotte Weber, director and CEO of the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing.