RAIFORD SMITH

Director, Tapestry, X’s Electric Grid Moonshot X

Raiford Smith leads the product and user experience teams for Tapestry, X’s moonshot for the electric grid. At X, Raiford’s teams work with leading utilities, system operators, and other industry players worldwide to design and develop new solutions, enabled by Machine Learning, to enhance the resilience, reduce the cost, and improve the sustainability of the electric grid across the globe.

Prior to his role at X, Raiford led Google’s global data center planning analytics, energy, water, and wastewater teams and was responsible for a multi-billion dollar budget while consistently delivering new data center capacity and hitting annual carbon-free energy targets. Before joining Google, Mr. Smith worked in various leadership and staff roles with electric and gas utilities such as The Southern Company, Duke Energy, CPS Energy, and Entergy in analytics, smart grid, product management, energy trading, legal, mergers and acquisitions, and technology functions.

A native of Savannah, Georgia, Mr. Smith earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the University of Georgia, a Masters of Business Administration degree from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia, and a Juris Doctor from the Charlotte School of Law. Raiford has also earned his Business Analytics Certificate from the Harvard Business Analytics Program.

Mr. Smith is a licensed attorney and member of the North Carolina Bar Association; holds seven patents on grid optimization and electric.