Dr. Smith graduated as a Presidential Scholar from Dartmouth College and then completed both his medical school and neurosurgical training at UCLA at the Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. He did further training in minimally invasive spine surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital (USC). He then completed an advanced deformity and minimally invasive fellowship at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and was recognized for this with both the CNS Spine Fellowship award and the AANS/CNS Spine Section Apfelbaum Award.