 | WILLIAM E. SMITH JR. |
The following biographical sketch was compiled at the time of induction into the Academy in 2008.
William E. Smith Jr.’s special brew is a house
blend of business success and visionary community leadership.
As chairman of Royal Cup
Coffee Company and A+ Education
Foundation, he has a distinguished
record in both business and civic affairs.
Smith was born in Birmingham
in 1942. He graduated from Ramsay
High School and Washington
and Lee University in Virginia. After
two years as a second lieutenant in
the U.S. Army Infantry, he earned an
MBA from Harvard.
After graduate school, he returned
to the family business, serving
as CEO of Royal Cup from 1968
until he became chairman in 1996.
As a business executive, he has served on other corporate
boards, including Dunn Investment Company and Bank.
However, Smith understands the role of an executive
to extend beyond the successful management of a strong
company. Beyond the company is the community, and he
has given the city of Birmingham and the state of Alabama
equal time, talent, and energy.
As chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham
Health System, he helped create the innovative Kirklin
Clinic, merging clinical systems with hospital systems. As
one of the creators of the Public Affairs Research Council
of Alabama, he raised the initial funding and recruited
the director for this respected non-partisan source of data
about every aspect of the state. He has served as chair of
the Davidson College (North Carolina)
board of visitors; chair of the
UAB President’s Council; and as an
alumni director of Washington and
Lee.
In 1982, Smith cofounded Leadership
Birmingham and, six years later,
Leadership Alabama. Both groups
seek to develop visionary leadership
to address Alabama’s challenges in
ways that overcome the shackles of
the past.
The discussions within Leadership
Alabama resulted in enthusiasm
for education reform, which
Smith and others harnessed to form
A+. As founding chairman of the group, Smith organized
statewide town meetings attended by as many as 25,000
persons. The A+ coalition that emerged from this process
put forward a progressive education reform package that
almost succeeded in the Alabama legislature. When the
package did not pass, Smith and A+ shifted their focus to
policy issues around which Alabamians could unite. He
has consistently sought to bring people together despite
differences of occupation, ideology, party, race, and gender.
He and his wife, the former Beverley Hart of Columbia,
South Carolina, have three children.
Created: October 20, 2008