Rick Smith

Rick Smith is an entrepreneur, connector, author and speaker with an eclectic range of accomplishments. He is one of the few leaders who has founded two companies from scratch in two completely separate industries which have surpassed $1B in value. He is the national bestselling author of three books and a prominent professional speaker, including the main stage at TED.

He is the Founder and CEO of The ONYX Group, a groundbreaking membership organization for the most respected leaders of our time, recently retired Fortune 500 CEOs including Alan Mullaly, Ann Mulcahy, AG Lafley, Marillyn Hewson, Roger Fergusson, Alex Gorsky and dozens of others. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of CNEXT, LLC, which has quickly emerged as a leader is inclusive leadership development, helping companies (Coca-Cola, Nike, Raytheon, Corning, etc.) build a highly diverse leadership pipeline, at scale.

Smith is the founder and former CEO of World 50, the world’s premier senior executive networking organization. World 50 contributors include Robert Redford, Condoleezza Rice, Bono, Alan Greenspan, President George W. Bush, Francis Ford Coppola and more than 200 other iconic leaders. A majority of the Fortune Global 1000 are World 50 customers. He is the Founder and former CEO of Fast Radius, an Industry 4.0 company backed by UPS (acquired by SyBridge Technologies) which ushered in a new era of on-demand digital manufacturing and supply chain solutions.

Rick is the founder of G100 Next Generation Leadership (acquired by World 50), a leading CEO succession development program for the Fortune 500, utilizing 35 CEOs as faculty. He is also the founder of the Talent Academy (also acquired by World 50), and a co-founder of Bionic (acquired by Accenture).

He is the WSJ bestselling author of: THE GREAT DISRUPTION (St. Martin Press), The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers (Random House), and The Leap (Penguin/Portfolio), with his work twice reaching #1 on the Amazon business bestseller list and being translated into more than 13 languages. He is an active professional speaker, and has keynoted more than 250 events, including the main stage at TED.

Rick is the inventor of the Primary Color personality assessment (patents pending), which has been taken by more than 100,000 people.

For fun, Rick is a semi-professional singer, songwriter, performing with the band Men Without Youth, which has opened for Zac Brown (twice) and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He plays guitar, keyboards and harmonica, and is a certified music production engineer.