Terrance Smith

Chief Innovation Officer

Terrance Smith is the Chief Innovation Officer for the Mayor’s Office of Innovation (Baltimore i-Team), based in Baltimore, where he specializes in leading trust-centered strategies to address urban challenges, including housing vacancy prevention, public safety recruitment/retention, and government agency reform. His work focuses on creating just, fair & co-developed solutions to foster meaningful, sustainable change between institutions and communities.

In addition to serving as a Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow, Terrance is a global research scholar. He developed the Trust Innovation Spectrum Framework, a pioneering tool for fostering institutional trustworthiness, and authored Navigating Trust: Paving the Path to Public Innovation, published by the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. This work explores the intersection of trust and innovation, offering actionable insights for public leaders.

Previously, Terrance held roles emphasizing strategic leadership, civic engagement, and design thinking. As the Founding Director of Mobile’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, he led the city’s Innovation Delivery Capacity and Data Center to enhance operational efficiency and cross-departmental collaboration. He also directed Mobile’s Mayor’s Innovation Team, achieving national recognition for innovative solutions to urban challenges, including decreasing housing vacancy and driving residential development.

As a sought-after speaker and educator, Terrance has presented at global forums such as the NATO Youth Summit, the World Resources Institute, and the Creative Bureaucracy Festival. His engagements emphasize institutional trustworthiness, storytelling, and fostering community collaboration as pillars for driving public innovation.

Through thoughtful, trust-centered strategies, Terrance is contributing to the creation of a future where cities thrive as just, fair, and resilient communities, with collective efforts fostering sustainable change.

Elizabeth Linos

Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School

Dr. Elizabeth Linos is the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for Public Policy and Management. The majority of her research focuses on how to improve government by focusing on its people and the services they deliver. Specifically, she uses insights from behavioral science and evidence from public management to consider how to recruit, retain, and support the government workforce; how to reduce administrative burdens that low-income households face when they interact with their government; and how to better integrate evidence-based policymaking into government. Her research has been published in various academic journals including the Journal for Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Econometrica, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Behavioural Public Policy and others. Her research has also been highlighted in media outlets including the New York Times, The Economist, the BBC, NPR, Slate, and the Harvard Business Review. As the former VP and Head of Research and Evaluation at the Behavioral Insights Team in North America, she worked with government agencies in the US and the UK to improve programs using behavioral science and to build capacity around rigorous evaluation. Prior to this role, Dr. Linos worked directly in government as a policy advisor to the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, focusing on social innovation and public sector reform.