James F. Smith has led advocacy communications for a foundation advancing women’s leadership and for Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. His first career was in journalism: At the Boston Globe, he was foreign editor and then national political editor. For the Los Angeles Times, he was bureau chief in Mexico City and Buenos Aires. He worked for the Associated Press for a dozen years in the United States, South Africa, the Netherlands, and Japan. He holds degrees from Yale University and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. A die-hard Bostonian, he is married to Maxine Hart and has two sons, Matthew and Daniel, and a stepdaughter, Leila.