Suzanne Smith Bio

Founder and CEO, Social Impact Architects

Suzanne Smith has a deep belief that everyone is a changemaker. As a serial social entrepreneur, she strives to harness the powerful force of organizations, including nonprofits, foundations and socially responsible businesses, and individuals, especially students and young entrepreneurs, to maximize the potential of the social sector to create real, scalable impact.

In 2009, Suzanne founded Social Impact Architects, a registered Benefit Corporation, to reshape the business of social change. She combines her MBA know-how with two decades of experience as a nonprofit innovator to serve as a consultant, advisor and thought partner. She is also a highly sought-after public speaker at conferences nationwide, including being selected as a featured speaker at TEDxTurtleCreekWomen. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. In this work, she has pioneered open-source frameworks for the creation of better social solutions, including layered logic models, ecosystem mapping and social alchemy. For her outstanding work as a leading thinker, she was recognized with the Next Generation Social Entrepreneur Award by the Social Enterprise Alliance. Since 2015, Social Impact Architects was recognized as one of the “Best for the World” small businesses by B Corp.

Suzanne also authors Social TrendSpotter (@socialtrendspot), one of the sector’s top blogs according to The Huffington Post. Known for its relatable way of blending important concepts and new ways of working with storytelling, Social TrendSpotter has been hailed by readers as “the only blog I read each week.” She is frequently interviewed by regional and national media on social entrepreneurship and has published articles in Forbes, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, See Change, Nonprofit Business Advisor, Upstart and Grantmakers in Health.

Suzanne has been at the epicenter of game-changing social solutions for more than two decades as a social intrapreneur. Her first jobs at the City of Garland and Texas Municipal League taught her the power and potential of local government to impact change. Later, she worked for Phoenix House to scale evidence-based prevention and treatment programs to Texas and for the American Heart Association to build a national state advocacy strategy. One of her greatest achievements was co-founding the Alliance for a Healthier Generation – one of the country’s first movements focused on combating childhood obesity – with a team from the William J. Clinton Foundation. She also co-founded Flywheel: Social Enterprise Hub in Cincinnati, Ohio, to help nonprofits build meaningful and sustainable social enterprises.

Suzanne holds an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where she was selected as the CASE (Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship) Scholar. Nationally, she was selected as a member of Peter Senge’s Society of Organizational Learning and has served on the national board of the Social Enterprise Alliance. She has advised many federal agencies on their efforts on social entrepreneurship and system change.

A third-generation Texan, her roots run deep through her work to improve her community with Leadership Dallas, Leadership North Texas, Dallas Summit, and the Junior League of Dallas. She has served a number of appointed posts for the City of Dallas and currently serves on the Library Board. In the past, she served in leadership roles on the Dallas Commission on Homelessness and the Mayor’s Task Force on Poverty. She was honored to receive the Dallas Business Journal’s 40 under 40 award in 2012 and the Dallas Regional Chamber’s Young ATHENA Leadership Award in 2014.

Raised by career educators who were deeply committed to making a difference through education, Suzanne found her calling at an early age as both a social activist and entrepreneur. When she isn’t traveling to speak, consult or discover new places, she can be found playing with her eight nieces and nephews or writing her first book on the social sector.