Ann Kowal Smith

Chief Executive Officer
Ann serves as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Reflection Point. Previously, Ann served as project manager for EducationWorks, a philanthropically-supported learning initiative whose work gave rise to Reflection Point (formerly Books@Work). Ann has also served as Principal with Heidrick & Struggles International and as an Expert with McKinsey & Company. Prior to joining McKinsey, Ann practiced corporate and securities law in private practice with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, LLP and Benesch LLP and in corporate practice with KeyCorp, where she served as Vice President and Senior Counsel. Ann is a Research Fellow at EPS@Weatherhead, a practitioner-scholar research community at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). She has also served as Adjunct Professor and Director of Praxis in Weatherhead’s Doctor of Management (D.M.) Program. Ann serves as an Advisory Board Member at CWRU’s Baker Nord Center for the Humanities and a Fellow at the Center for Evidence-Based Management. She holds an A.B. in History of Art from Bryn Mawr College and a M.A. in History of Art from the University of Michigan, in addition to a J.D. and a DBA from CWRU. Her dissertation examined organizational learning and innovation. Ann's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals, The New York Times, Crain's Cleveland Business, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

She writes regularly in Forbes.com