EMILY SMITH

SMITH--Emily Thompson. Award winning journalist Emily Thompson Smith of Croton-on-Hudson, NY died Friday, August 27, 2021. She was 72. Dedicated to environmental issues and solutions, her coverage of the interplay of science, technology policy and the environment helped shape public consciousness and global interdependency. The first journalist to author a newsmagazine cover story on sustainable development prior to the first United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 while serving as science editor of BusinessWeek, now Bloomberg BusinessWeek, she spent 15 years at the magazine. She started as a correspondent, then served as Boston Bureau Chief and finally as Science and Environment Editor in New York. She wrote numerous cover stories, was the inaugural recipient in 1993 of Whitman Basso Award for environmental coverage, conferred by the Overseas Press Club, the highest honor for international magazine coverage. She was part of a team that received two coveted National Magazine Awards in the 1990s as well as winning an award for exemplary coverage by the National Education Association in 1983. She was also lead author of some 20 cover stories in her time at the magazine. Her comprehensive, strategic long-form stories grappled with such topics as the oceans, aging, global environmental interdependency, environmental economics, world population and food supply as she led coverage of science. Earlier she was an editor at Electronic Business in Boston where she mastered coverage of the software and hardware industry. After leaving BusinessWeek she co-wrote and edited The Business of Sustainable Forestry, Strategies for an Industry in Transition, published by Island Press as part of a project of the MacArthur Foundation. She also worked as a management consultant both for international business enterprises and for nonprofits. Interested in environmental philanthropy, she served on the board of directors of the Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation in New York for several years and was a judge for the Scripps environmental journalism awards and annual awards of the Overseas Press Club of which she was a member. Her exposure to business began at Cutter Labs in San Francisco where she worked after graduating from the University of Washington. Concurrently she was a reporter for the innovative San Francisco Bay Guardian before attending the University of Minnesota where she studied science journalism and earned a master's in mass communication and media theory. An avid amateur equestrian she practiced competitive dressage and owned several dressage horses over 30 years. She pursued a lifelong interest in art and collected American antiques, Chinese, Japanese and Inuit art having majored in art history as an undergraduate. Married to Dr. Everette E. Dennis, an administrator, professor and media researcher at Columbia, Fordham, Oregon, Minnesota and Northwestern universities, she accompanied him to Doha, Qatar in 2011 where he served as dean and CEO of Northwestern's only international campus. She resided there several months of the year while continuing activities in New York and Westchester County. They met at the University of Minnesota in the 1970s and were married in 1988 in New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Born in Ames, Iowa in 1948 to Dr. Lewis Smith, an English professor and his wife Mary Emily Smith who preceded her in death as did her brother Lewis (Rad) Smith. She is survived by her husband, a sister, Rebecca Smith of Queens, NY and 10 nieces and nephews. She lived in Minnesota, Washington State, California, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia. No funeral or memorial is planned. Gifts in her honor are welcome at the Emily Thompson Smith Endowed Student Support Fund for Environmental Politics at the University of Washington's Center for Environmental Politics or Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.