Brandon Smith has two terminal degrees, one in Theatre and another in Educational Leadership, focusing on the use of improvement science to improve equitable outcomes in postsecondary education. He is an award-winning educator, director, and playwright and has experience successfully collaborating on the design and implementation of improvement plans that significantly increase retention and student success.

In 2020, Smith began working with the Gardner Institute to support the Bill and Melinda Gates Intermediaries for Scale initiative. That work involved developing campus transformation efforts at six MSI to improve equitable student retention and completion outcomes. Institutional transformation continues to be a focus of his contributions to the Institute, and his work regularly involves engaging campus community members in data review, development of change ideas, and practitioner-research-focused methods for testing and scaling improvements that support more equitable student learning and student success outcomes at institutions. As an Associate Vice President at the Gardner Institute, Brandon advises institutions in curricular redesign. He works with several institutions to increase curricular pathway efficiency using the Gardner Institute’s Curricular Analytics Community Process. Dr. Smith is a Coordinator for the Chief Academic Officer Innovation Community and Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience and supports several other grant-funded projects.

In all his work, Brandon aims to help institutions imagine a better future and design the systems required to make that future a reality.