Jay Smith is the inaugural Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program at the University of Maryland. He manages both its operational aspects as well as teaching and mentoring the living-learning student community members. Mr. Smith joined the University of Maryland in the summer of 2010 after serving for five years as Associate Professor of the Inamori Academy of Kagoshima (National) University in southern Japan. At Kagoshima University, he developed and taught courses in venture business entrepreneurship, business communications, and American business and culture. Prior to entering academia, Mr. Smith worked for fourteen years as a management consultant, investment banker and venture entrepreneur in New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. Mr. Smith holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he focused on entrepreneurship and the management of technology. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with High Honors and a dual major in Economics and Physics, from Rutgers University.