Jed Smith ’88

Jed A. Smith ’88 returns to the Middlebury Board of Trustees after having served 10 years as a Middlebury Trustee, Institute trustee, and member of the Institute Board of Governors. After Middlebury, he began his career in San Francisco as an early employee at Oracle Corporation. Jed followed his entrepreneurial roots as a tech founder, ultimately taking the early internet pioneer drugstore.com public and successfully selling it to Walgreens. A Harvard MBA along the way helped him learn the lexicon of what he was already practicing. He went on to found two San Francisco–based venture capital firms: Catamount Ventures and Owl Ventures, which raised over $ 1 billion and backed dozens of innovative entrepreneurs/firms. The latter half of his investing career focused on sustainability and education initiatives. He has since retired and is giving back in different ways: He leads two family-owned businesses in Massachusetts, the Brookline Booksmith and the Wellfleet Marketplace; has served on the numerous non-profit boards; founded the Herring Pond Watershed Association on Cape Cod; and currently he is the publicly elected President of the board of directors of the Marin Municipal Water District which manages 7 reservoirs, securing water for Marin County’s 250,000+ residents and is a steward of the critical 22,000 acre Mount Tamalpais watershed. Jed is a proud father of three wonderful young adults and, with his wife Caitlin, lives in Mill Valley, CA.