Jason J. Smith is the President of The Completed Life Initiative. Jason was born and raised in Oklahoma and Texas and comes from a long line of hardworking farmers and ministers. He credits his loving and disciplined parents for helping him overcome congenital conditions—microtia and aural atresia, which left him with only one ear to hear with—to achieve his full potential.

Jason graduated from NYU’s Stern School of Business Magna Cum Laude in Information Systems in just three years. After graduation he began a successful consulting career with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in New York and San Francisco, where he traveled the world on assignments and solved unique business problems in the telecommunications, financial services and engineering industries. Caught up in the dot-com boom in San Francisco in the late 1990s, Jason joined Razorfish, a web development firm, and later founded his own internet marketing company, Ascension Communications. After running his business for three successful years, he enrolled at Yale Law School.

After graduating from Yale, Jason clerked for Chief Judge Robert N. Chatigny of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. Jason thereafter joined Wiggin and Dana, where he started in the Litigation department and transitioned to Private Client Services. He then moved to Katten Muchin Rosenman’s New York office and two years later became a partner at the law firm of Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone, where he successfully built a Trusts and Estates Litigation practice group over the course of three and a half years prior to founding the Firm.

Hard work, discipline, thoughtfulness, preparation, and “can-do” values are a part of Jason’s DNA. They explain how he becomes his clients’ “attorney for life” and continues as a go-to resource well past the initial engagement. Jason publishes and is becoming a sought-after speaker at conferences and professional meetings. His publications and lectures cover a variety of topics, including lessons learned from the estate plans (or lack thereof) of the rich and famous, tips for avoiding and/or defending will contests, Surrogate’s Court practice updates, advanced topics in fiduciary accounting, trust decanting, and ethical and practical tips for the modern trusts and estates practitioner.

Jason resides in Greenwich, Connecticut with his husband Dominick and their two children, Leo and Alice.