EDUCATOR ✦ ARTIST ✦ LEADER ✦ COMMUNITY BUILDER
solutions
Professional Development for Educators
Practical, high-impact professional learning that strengthens instructional practice, leadership, and school culture.
Workshops for
Parents & Caregivers
Engaging workshops that help families partner with schools and support young people with clarity and confidence.
Equity Work & Practice Consulting for Educators
Thoughtful, actionable equity consulting that helps teams turn values into consistent, sustainable practice.
Don Smith is an educator, artist, leader, and community builder who has spent more than 20 years helping schools become more human-centered, creative, and connected.
Currently serving as Head of Middle School at The Buckley School in Los Angeles, Don brings deep experience in independent school leadership, child development, multicultural education, advisory programming, faculty support, and school culture. His career has included leading curriculum and advisory redesign, developing student-centered programs, supporting teacher growth, and building systems that help schools better understand and support the academic and social lives of young people. He holds a Master’s degree in Organizational and Private School Leadership from Columbia University Teachers College/Klingenstein Institute and was honored with the 2025 Bessie Bruington Burke Excellence in Education Award.
What makes Don’s work distinct is the way he blends rigor with warmth. He is as comfortable analyzing systems as he is creating a song, leading a workshop, writing poetry, or sitting with a student who needs to be understood. As a singer-songwriter, spoken word poet, author, and facilitator, Don believes education should make room for intellect, identity, creativity, and joy.
Through Don Smith Consulting, LLC, Don partners with schools, educators, parents, and leaders to build stronger communities, deepen practice, and create spaces where people feel seen, challenged, and inspired to grow.
Each week, Collette Bowers Zinn and Don Smith take on the moments everyone's talking about — and the ones they're avoiding — with unfiltered conversation that's as incisive as it is entertaining.
With undeniable chemistry and a shared instinct to question, challenge, and clarify, the hosts draw the line between what works, what doesn't, and what we're no longer entertaining. From culture to relationships to the systems shaping our lives, nothing is off-limits... but everything is examined.
