Jerry A. Smith

Dr. Jerry A. Smith has spent more than thirty years building software systems and the organizations that build them. He is the author of AI Assisted Software Engineering: Build Better Software with Human Creativity and AI, a textbook for upper-division and graduate software engineering courses, and The Enterprise Cortex, a playbook for giving enterprise AI an institutional memory.

He began in the U.S. Navy (1980–1991) as a nuclear engineer operating submarine reactors, a carrier-based jet pilot, and a software engineer on airborne missile targeting systems at China Lake and San Diego. He went on to serve as CTO at several software companies, then built AI practices from nothing inside six global firms, including Cognizant, where he created the company's first global data science practice, and Capgemini. Most recently, he has designed and run production AI systems in financially regulated environments.

He is the founder and principal of Verity Vantage Group, a production-AI engineering and advisory firm, and writes Building Minds, a newsletter on AI strategy and cognitive architecture. He holds a PhD and an MS in computer science from Nova Southeastern University and a BS in electrical engineering from Cal Poly Pomona. He is also the author of the novel Tulpamancer: Edge of Chaos. He lives in Shallotte, North Carolina, with his wife, Victoria.