Brad Smith was six years old when a plane carrying the 1970 Marshall University football team crashed a mile from his home near campus in southern West Virginia, killing all 75 people on board. His cousins rushed to aid their dying neighbors as volunteer firefighters. “I watched the flames burn outside my window,” Smith remembers. “And then I watched this community rise from the ashes.”
Half a century later, the recently retired Intuit CEO’s community is waging new battles, with an opioid epidemic raging and the coal economy that once made Governor Jim Justice a billionaire on the verge of extinction. So, after 36 years away, Smith decided to take the country roads back home to West Virginia, the place he belongs—and into the President’s House at Marshall, his alma mater, which he took over in January 2022. He brought back with him a sizable fortune, accumulated over nearly four decades in business. According to Forbes’ ranking of the richest person in each state, released Thursday for the first time since 2019, he’s West Virginia’s wealthiest resident, worth $700 million.
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