Drexel Smith earned an Associate of Science degree at Mt. SAC and a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Redlands. He is a combat veteran having served honorably with the United States Navy for over four years with two tours in Vietnam, including a tour as an advisor with the Naval Advisory Group
Drexel Smith has a unique combination of skills and experience from a long history of public service and more than four decades of evaluating systems for the defense, aerospace, energy, transportation and commercial product industries. His broad range of career responsibilities went from technical, to contract administration, to executive management; from test engineer to corporate management. He retired in December 2008 as the Corporate Sr. Vice President of Wyle Laboratories Inc., where he was responsible for business development; marketing and communications; environment, health & safety; real property; and government relations. Previous assignment was Senior Vice President & General Manager, Technical Support Services (TSS) Business Unit that operated and maintained laboratories and research facilities for government and industry clients such as DoD, NASA and major prime contractors.
Today he is principal of the Drexel Consulting Group, LLC an executive management consulting group supporting corporations and new business start-up companies. Mr. Smith remains active in the political process both locally and in Washington.
For the past ten years Smith has been actively involved in workforce development and STEM education issues. As a member of the California Space Authority Board of Directors he was instrumental in establishing a Speaker’s Bureau to ‘ring-the-bell’ of the emerging crisis of fewer students taking a science curriculum speaking before Congressional committees and industry. Smith continues to actively participate as a speaker on technical and policy areas and has been providing a series of papers and presentations on workforce and education issues in the Aerospace, Energy and Technology market sectors and has been a national speaker on this topic to technical societies, civic and academia groups.