Kendra Smith

Kendra L. Smith, Ph.D., is the Associate Director in the Office of Community Engagement in the

Center for Population Health Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine. She is

responsible for expanding the ethical use and knowledge of community-engaged research

throughout the Stanford School of Medicine community. She accomplishes this through strategic

research initiatives, the development of new and innovative models for engagement through

original research, facilitating seminars and workshops, providing technical assistance to faculty,

and developing community partnerships. Dr. Smith serves as co-lead of the Community

Engagement Core of the Stanford Center for Clinical and Translational Research and Education,or SPECTRUM– an independent research center funded by an NIH Clinical and TranslationalScience Award (CTSA).

Previously, Dr. Smith served as a research analyst at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at

Arizona State University investigating policy trends in homelessness, demographic shifts, and

citizen engagement. Also, she worked as a post-doctoral scholar under the direction of Kevin

Desouza and a research fellow at the Center for Urban Innovation at Arizona State University,

where she researched various topics on local government, crowdsourcing, citizen science, and

smart cities. Her work has been published in the American Planning Association’s Planning

Magazine, Scientific American, Governing, Journal of Information Systems and Technology

Management, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Brookings Institution Tech Tank, EduCause,

Public Sector Digest, The Conversation, and Planetizen.

Dr. Smith earned a doctorate in Community Resources & Development at Arizona State

University and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma. Her

passion is finding ways to build healthy and engaged communities.