Evan Smith

Evan Smith is a senior advisor at Emerson Collective, whose media team he works with closely on initiatives that support the local news ecosystem around the country. He’s also a senior advisor at The Texas Tribune, the pioneering nonprofit digital news organization he cofounded in 2009 and led for more than thirteen years as CEO, and he’s a Distinguished Fellow in Journalism at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy. Previously he spent eighteen years at Texas Monthly, including nine years as the magazine’s editor in chief and a year as its president. Evan is the host of “Overheard with Evan Smith,” a weekly half-hour interview program that airs on PBS stations around the country. A native of New York, he has an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College, which awarded him an honorary degree in 2023, and a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, which inducted him into its Hall of Achievement in 2006.