George D. Smith

President and co-founder of Signature Books, George D. Smith grew up raising slugs in the kitchen sink while listening to radio dramas like The Shadow and Ellery Queen. During his college years at Stanford, he competed on the wrestling team and while pursuing his graduate degree at NYU he played in a folk band. He managed investment portfolios at Citibank after graduation. 

Smith met his wife, Camilla Miner, while working in New York, where Camilla earned a master’s degree from Columbia University. They married and moved to San Francisco, and shortly thereafter, Smith founded two companies—Smith Capital Management and Smith Research Associates. Dedicated in his support of the literary community and the arts, Smith served on the national board of the Kenyon Review, the Leakey Foundation, National Public Radio, and other organizations and corporate boards.

Smith has also served on the Library Committee of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and was one of the early board members at Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. He is the author of Nauvoo Polygamy, as well as several articles found in Free Inquiry, Journal of Mormon History, John Whitmer Historical Journal, and Sunstone. He is the editor of the two-volume Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871.