Biography

Chad Eric Smith, a Washington, DC native, serves as the inaugural Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing for Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, where he leads the College’s integrated communications and marketing strategy, shaping how its people, programs, and creative impact are positioned and shared with audiences across Howard and beyond. 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 launched Mural Arts’ first organization-wide intranet, the Communications Hub, to strengthen internal alignment; oversaw communications for more than 125 public art projects annually; and led the first major overhaul and relaunch of the organization’s website in nearly a decade. Under his communications leadership, Mural Arts’ Instagram audience grew from approximately 83,000 to more than 104,000 followers—a 25.3% increase—with corresponding growth across other digital platforms. His tenure also elevated the organization’s national visibility, including coordinating its nationally televised feature on the Emmy Award-winning series Abbott Elementary, which reached an audience of 2.475 million viewers.

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, taking on roles that span drama, comedy, science fiction, and politically engaged storytelling. His screen performances include a troubled young physicist in Fatherless, a vampire with a fear of blood in Dark Therapy, a justice-impacted man battling addiction in Counselor, and a Black nationalist and atheist in the political drama Four Points. Onstage, he has 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, earning an Onyx Award from the African American Council on the Arts (AACTA) for each production.

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 the short sci-fi drama Rumination, the latter of which screened at more than 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 2023 graduate of Leadership Philadelphia; and is 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 son, Legend.