Ed Smith previously served The Kresge Foundation as a senior program officer, managing a portfolio of grants focused on promoting college opportunity and degree completion. He designed the foundation’s initiatives to increase college affordability, modernize student loan debt repayment, and recover funds lost by students to for-profit colleges. He also managed the foundation’s voter engagement work and supervised education grants to its partners in New Orleans and Texas.

Ed previously held positions at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, NASPA’s Research and Policy Institute, and the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

Ed consulted for New Jersey’s Office of the Secretary of Higher Education, identifying ways to manage and message its tuition-free community college pilot and codify it in state policy. He also taught courses at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels and currently teaches budgeting and finance in higher education at Georgetown University. He is a fellow at the Student Borrower Protection Center and serves on the board of Complete College America, where he chairs the finance committee.

Ed holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, as well as a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in education from The Pennsylvania State University.