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CEO & President
Emerson Smith is a PhD sociologist.
He is President & CEO of Metromark® Market Research, Inc.
His research interests include, among others, health care outcomes, response to epidemics and pandemics, innovation in biotechnology, the process of technology transfer, international economic development, urban development, the dynamics of corporate and group decision-making, including how jurors make decisions, and how organizations communicate effectively with employees, clients, and members of the general public.
He has worked with a variety of regional, national and international companies and organizations. He has conducted seminars on technology transfer at research centers in Poland, including the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the University of Lodz, and the Wroclaw Research Center EIT+.
He is a keynote speaker at state hospital associations on the past, present, and future of healthcare.
He received his PhD in sociology from Emory University, his MA from Texas Christian University, and his BA from the University of Texas at Austin. He served as a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Overseas Fellow at the University of Exeter, Devon, England, UK.
At the University of Texas at Austin, he first experienced the diversity of the population by doing research that involved observation and interviewing in the homes of people living in rich, poor, Hispanic, black, white, single family, and multifamily homes.
His concentration at Emory was in the perception and classification of deviant/abnormal behavior and in medical sociology.
He has worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Research Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas in association with Parkland Memorial Hospital. He has also worked at Emory University as an instructor, at the Wesley Woods Center for Continuing Education in Atlanta teaching college students about urban life, and at the University of South Carolina at Columbia as an assistant professor of sociology.
In addition to his work at Metromark, he is a clinical research assistant professor of internal medicine on the faculty of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia. He has served on the faculty of the American Hospital Association’s Health Forum.
He is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the American Sociological Association, and the Insights Association for Market Research.
He is also a member of the American Hospital Association’s Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development and its regional affiliates. He makes presentations with each of these groups and serves as a judge for awards of excellence in communication.
Emerson serves as a mentor in social research, data analysis, primary and secondary research, marketing, making recommendations on action to be taken based on research, and in implementing and testing those recommendations.
He served on the faculty of the Press Ganey Regional Education Workshops.
He is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certificated flight instructor (CFII) as well as a FAA Safety Team Representative for the SC Flight Services District Office (FSDO).
Emerson has served as a mission pilot in the Civil Air Patrol, the Auxiliary of the United States Air Force. He is a past South Carolina Wing Commander and holds the grade of Colonel.
He served a commissioner on the Richland County Airport Commission at the Jim Hamilton-L.B. Owens Airport (CUB), the downtown airport in Columbia SC.
He serves the South Carolina Flight Services District Office as a FAA Safety Team Representative.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up in Dallas, Texas. Today, he lives in Dallas, Texas and in Columbia, South Carolina.
He is a member of the Rotary Club of Five Points (Columbia, South Carolina), a past-president of this club, and a Paul Harris Fellow.
Further information about Emerson can be found at LinkedIn (dot) com/in/emersonsmith
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