Biography

Chad Eric Smith, a Washington, DC native, serves as the inaugural Director of Marketing and Communications for Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. A mission-driven storyteller and multihyphenate artist, Chad brings over 15 years of experience spanning the performing arts, higher education, and strategic communications—a career rooted in equity, creative excellence, and community impact.

Before joining Howard, Chad served as Senior Director of Communications and Brand Management for Mural Arts Philadelphia, the nation’s largest public art program and one of the city’s most visible civic institutions. As the first man and first person of color to hold that role, he led a comprehensive rebranding initiative, authoring the organization’s action-oriented slogan ‘Beautify. Inspire. Empower.’ to unite staff and audiences around a shared mission. He also launched Mural Arts’ first internal intranet to strengthen internal alignment, oversaw communications for more than 125 public art projects annually, and helped grow the organization’s digital following by more than 19,000. His leadership advanced the organization’s national reputation, including a feature on the Emmy Award-winning series Abbott Elementary, viewed by more than 2.4 million people. 

Earlier in his career, Chad strengthened pathways to opportunity through positions as an admissions counselor at the University of Pittsburgh, a college advisor with the DC College Access Program, and a consultant for the national nonprofit Men Can Stop Rape—roles that sharpened his understanding of leadership, empathy, and social responsibility.

An award-winning actor, Chad has built a dynamic, creative career across theatre and independent film. Whether portraying a troubled young physicist (Fatherless), a vampire with a fear of blood (Dark Therapy), a justice-impacted man battling addiction (Counselor), or a Black nationalist and atheist in the political drama Four Points, Chad has earned praise for his range and commitment to thought-provoking stories. In theatre, he’s held leading and supporting roles in classic dramas, contemporary works, and musicals, including Raisin and I Gotcha! The Story of Joe Tex and the Soul Clan, for which he received multiple Onyx Awards from the African American Council on the Arts (AACTA).

In 2017, Chad founded MisterDuke Productions, a film production company that creates political ads, PSAs, and genre-bending narrative works for screen and digital platforms. He wrote, directed, and produced the short vampire comedy, Dark Therapy, and short sci-fi drama, Rumination, which have screened at over 30 international festivals and earned numerous awards. In 2019, he was named Filmmaker of the Month by the DC Office of Cable Television, Film, Music & Entertainment.

Chad currently serves as Board President of Theatre Horizon, a professional theatre company in Norristown, PA; is a Leadership Philadelphia 2023 graduate; and a founding member of the advisory committee for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. 

A third-generation advocate for education, his connection to Howard runs deep—his late grandfather, Dr. Kenneth S. Tollett, Sr., served as a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for the Study of Educational Policy. He enjoys playing the piano, learning about U.S. presidential history, and spending time with his wife and their ten-month-old son, Legend.