From Jamaican roots to a Bermuda upbringing and stateside education, Stephanie Alexis Smellie is the definition of a multi-hyphenate powerhouse.
“My core competency of adaptability and being able to just adapt wherever I am to my surroundings has benefited me in a lot of ways throughout my life,” she said of her success.
In July, Smellie spoke about Web3 and equity at Essence Festival, an uplifting gathering of Black voices hosted by the iconic lifestyle magazine. She was also a celebrated speaker at this year's AfroTech Conference in Austin, Texas, where she shared the stage alongside well-known Web3 creators like cityscape photographer Elise Swopes.
Like many, Smellie's journey to Web3 has been nonlinear but speckled with serendipitous connecting dots. She was previously VP of content and partnerships at the Flow blockchain developer studio Dapper Labs. Prior to that, she was in music and entertainment, heading up creator partnerships at Spotify and working as VP of business development and partnerships at iHeart Media.
But her story begins earlier than her professional resume, with influences from Silicon Valley's startup scene, an Ivy League business education and a longstanding pattern of bridging seemingly disparate worlds.
A charismatic breath of fresh air best describes Smellie, born to Jamaican parents and raised in Bermuda. Her father, an expat working in finance, set a rather high bar for his daughter: “There was an expectation of going to one of four careers, one of them being accounting,” Smellie says.
At the young age of 16, Smellie attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study Business Administration, and she earned her CPA by age 21. From there she headed to Wall Street to take on Deloitte and Deutsche Bank in New York City.
By day an accountant and by night a regular in the entertainment and sports scene, Smellie saw the world through varying lenses. She had the realization in her twenties that music was her true passion. This perspective led her on a path of discovery, where she found out it was just as possible to earn a healthy living in media and entertainment as it was to support herself with finance — particularly when tech was involved.
So Smellie took a year to recalibrate and build up funds. She decided to pursue her MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, knowing she could leverage her experience and connections into a career pivot. While at Wharton, she interned at Sony Music, where she got on the fast track to a career marrying music and tech.
While most students set their sights on far-away destinations, Smellie chose to study "abroad" in the land of startups during her MBA experience. Her time in the Bay Area was golden because it was where she made a determined decision.
“It was kind of life-changing for me because I was hell-bent on not going back to consulting, investment banking or anything like that,” she shared.
So she networked her way through coffee chats across Silicon Valley. The investments in caffeine and time would later come full circle to give her keys to an opportunity of her dreams.
After her MBA, Smellie joined Under Armour as a consultant. And so began her "hustle" era. According to Smellie, she extended her initial contractual agreement and secured a longer gig by knocking on everyone’s door, including that of the CMO. She secured a spot working on the global marketing team, where she worked with athletes like NBA star Steph Curry.
Smellie wasn't in the music biz yet — but sports was closer in proximity than banking. She soon accepted an offer from iHeartMedia to work in business development and partnerships. She started doing deals with the likes of Amazon and Comcast to integrate iHeartRadio content into their platforms.
Then, one day — seemingly out of the blue — Smellie got a LinkedIn message from a Spotify recruiter who had gotten her name from an executive who name-dropped Smellie to take over his role. That executive was from one of the many coffee chats during her time in Silicon Valley. It was a time of coming full circle and reaping dividends from her efforts and caffeine consumption during networking.
A few months into her role as head of creative partnerships at Spotify, the global pandemic began. Artists could no longer go on tour or make money in the traditional sense.
Smellie decided to get creative. She initiated a deal with PayPal and other peer-to-peer providers to launch a feature called “Artist Fundraising Pick” where consumers could go to the artist page and donate to their favorite acts directly. She also negotiated another major deal to bring e-commerce capabilities from Shopify to Spotify so that artists could sell merch and digital goods. Smellie was changing the name of the game for creators and partnerships.
During this time Smellie started hearing about NFTs and NBA Top Shot. This got her wheels turning to ask the question “What else can we do to help creators monetize?”
Dapper Labs had been one of the companies she had been in conversation with, and Smellie ended up moving there as the VP of content and entertainment partnerships. Through this role she spoke with 380 partners over the course of eight months to understand their goals for both Web2 and Web3. She helped them strategize how to unlock those goals through the Flow blockchain (the chain on which Dapper Labs builds).
“My biggest passion is increasing the number of Black people in the space," said Smellie.
During her time at Dapper Labs, Smellie launched a Black History Month program to support Black developers through a $1 Million token grant. She is looking to make a difference in this space by always looking for ways to put underrepresented communities in positions where they can thrive.
“I refer people from my network first because I know a ton of these opportunities, so that's a big passion point for me. I'm working on some bigger things that will hopefully be more scalable to my community," Smellie said.
Currently, Smellie is an in-demand Web3 advisor consulting across a number of platforms and startups. She advises on how to transition from Web2 to Web3 — a super relevant question that many companies are asking.
For Web3 companies, Smellie serves as the spark who helps craft strategies around partnerships, diversity, engagement and sustainability. She is also in the process of launching a database of developers, artists and designers in the Black community that have those skill sets so that she can easily recommend talent.
“I would love projects to leverage the people who are a part of it so that we can help representation in the space,” Smellie explained. When asked about the future of Web3 and her mission, Smellie said, “I'm really hopeful and optimistic that the things Black creators contribute to and influence is what they will be able to get paid from.”
Janey Park is a Web3 content creator (writer, speaker, video creator) and brand strategy consultant. She is on a mission to help others jumpstart into Web3, especially through fashion and beauty.
This is not financial advice. If you don't want to spend money investing in crypto or Web3 — you don’t have to. The intent of this article is to help others educate themselves and learn.
