Darryl Smith

Darryl A. Smith works at the intersection of culture, leadership, organizational transformation, and enterprise performance, helping executives and senior teams navigate complexity, strengthen alignment and accountability, and translate organizational priorities into meaningful and sustainable change. As a Principal at FMG Leading, he partners with leaders navigating complex cultural and organizational transformation to move from insight and intention to measurable action that strengthens leadership effectiveness, engagement, and business performance.

Darryl brings a rare ability to connect strategic rigor with deep cultural insight. He advises executives and senior leaders, develops leaders and teams, and coaches decision-makers working through complex organizational and leadership challenges. His approach is practical, data-informed, and grounded in each organization’s culture, objectives, and operating realities, with particular attention to the behaviors, relationships, and systems that shape performance.

His work spans strategic planning, senior leadership development, executive coaching, inclusive leadership, culture and organizational transformation, diversity councils, business resource groups, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and measurement. Across financial services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, government, nonprofit, education, and private equity contexts, Darryl helps organizations translate awareness into action, strengthen cross-functional collaboration, and create the conditions for people and performance to thrive together.

Prior to joining FMG Leading, Darryl served as a Senior Client Partner in Korn Ferry’s Chicago office, where he advised organizations on complex culture, leadership, and inclusion challenges and led cross-functional teams supporting enterprise-wide transformation. Earlier in his career, he held business development, training, and management roles with Fortune 500 companies.