VIRGINIA: West Virginia native Brad Smith(WVNBS), the president and CEO of Intuit, Inc., carried a lot of his West Virginia upbringing into his career. It’s a career which quickly shot him to the top of the high-tech company.“You have to re-imagine yourself,” he told a group at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce Business Summit at the Greenbrier Resort last week. “Throughout the entire process we never changed our mission to improve our customers’ lives to the point they could never imagine going back.”Brad Smith says West Virginians know how to overcome adversity.
Smith was born in Kenova and attended Marshall University. He said three key lessons from his upbringing have served him well; integrity, humility, and teamwork. Smith is fiercely loyal to his native state and wants to see West Virginia prosper. He said the continued advancement of technology can actually be a huge boost to a state like West Virginia which typically struggles to find flat land to attract corporations.“I look at West Virginia and we are strong as oak,” he said. “This topography broke the backs of early pioneers, but not the ones who settled here. We learned how to overcome adversity, but we have to become a different version of ourselves if we’re going to take our place in the future.”Smith said education is important, but it doesn’t have to be real complicated. He suggested “coding boot camps” which can have children writing apps and code within two months.
You can also pay for the school by committing a percentage of your first year salary.“Our kids can learn these skills and we ought to take advantage of that,” said Smith.West Virginia’s plight is not unlike that of Ireland. Smith said a generation ago Ireland endured high unemployment, substance abuse, and crumbling infrastructure. He said Ireland re-invented itself, but didn’t change who it was, and is now the fastest growing nation in the European Union and getting better all the time.“Do I think I have all the answers? I don’t, but I know this,” he said. “There are answers out there and all we have to do is seek to learn from those people who fought through the same stuff we have. We’re going to be fine.”Intuit, Inc., offers products like QuickBooks, Quicken and Payroll products. Smith has been president and CEO since 2008.
