Dr. Rodney D. Smith is co-founder and co-managing partner of Sophic Solutions, a Kansas City-based change management consulting firm. Smith is the firm’s lead authority on issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. His expertise specifically pertains to student achievement, with a special emphasis on African American student achievement, urban education and culturally responsive pedagogy.

He recently served as the inaugural Vice President for Access and Engagement at William Jewell College where he led all of the college’s diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives. In this role, he chaired the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Team and worked with students, staff and faculty toward increasing cross-cultural engagement at all levels across the campus community. He also served as the chair for the Racial Reconciliation Commission, a group of scholars who were commissioned to investigate the College’s history as a slaveholding institution.
Smith also holds a Graduate Adjunct Professorship with the School of Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he specializes in courses that address racial and ethnic diversity, and cultural understanding.

Over the course of a 30-year career, Dr. Smith’s scholarly interests have taken aim at the implications of race and racism in American society.

Dr. Smith also wrote and published is first book Are We Really Crabs in a Barrel: The Truth and Other Insights About the African American Community in 2016. He also wrote a chapter in an anthology entitled The Trayvon Martin in Us: An American Tragedy in 2015.

Smith holds a Doctor of Education Degree from Tennessee State University, a Master of Education Degree also from Tennessee State University and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Morris Brown College. He is married to Stephenie K. Smith, and they are the proud parents of two young adult children.