Raymond W. Smith (IM 1959, T)

Raymond W. Smith (IM 1959, T), as CEO of Bell Atlantic, led his company to become one of the largest communications corporations in the world – Verizon.

Retiring in 1999 from Verizon, Smith founded Arlington Capital Partners, which led to a multibillion-dollar private equity firm. In his spare time, he became the Chairman of Rothschild North America.

At 15, he worked nights in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newsroom, earning enough for the family’s first high school degree and a bachelor of science degree from the Tepper School of Business in 1959. He became a Carnegie Mellon University trustee emeritus. In 2017, and  the Alumni Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Smith recalls his student days with great affection, especially the year he spent trying to teach one of IBM’s first computers to add and subtract. Smith and the other part-timers spent hours connecting tiny jumper wires from socket A to socket B. This produced punch cards that they fed to the machine.