Terrance Smith brought over a decade of experience in the public sector to his role as one of two inaugural Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellows at Johns Hopkins University from 2022 to 2024. Smith’s Fellowship project, Designing Trustworthy Public Institutions, breaks new ground in operationalizing trust in organizations and teams to unleash innovation. In a project research brief, Navigating Trust: Paving the Path to Public Innovation, Smith introduces the Trust-Innovation Spectrum, which proposes optimal zones of trust for overcoming cynicism and avoiding groupthink, both of which can stymie risk-taking and creative thinking necessary to innovation. Smith’s trust-innovation framework is based on insights from his conversations with scholars and practitioners around the world as well as research support from the Center to undertake comparative analysis across four cities in the Americas and Europe: Barranquilla, Colombia; Kansas City, Missouri; Mobile, Alabama; and Vantaa, Finland. Designing Trustworthy Public Institutions remains an ongoing project at the Center.

Previously, Smith, a native of Mobile, Alabama, led the city’s first innovation team, which garnered local and national attention for its strategies improving quality of life for residents. He was the founder of Mobile’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, which houses the Innovation Team and Datacenter. Earlier in his career, he was responsible for developing, operating,
and scaling the prototype for Alabama’s first charter school. Bloomberg’s CityLab named Smith one of “Six Innovators to Watch,” and he was a 2019 Traegar award winner, which recognizes the nation’s top engaging local government leaders. Terrance is a graduate of the University of South Alabama, Leadership Mobile,
and the Alabama Leadership Initiative. Currently, Smith serves as director of Baltimore’s innovation team in the Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation.

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