Harry Smith
Executive Vice President and General Manager
Harry J. Smith is Executive Vice President and General Manager of Southern States Land & Timber LLC and has been actively involved in the management of the J. M. Burguières Companies since 1998. He is a director of The J. M. Burguières Co., Limited, Southern States’ parent company. He is president of HarrySmithConsulting providing management and consulting services to family owned businesses since 1992. He holds an MBA from Tulane University and completed the Executive Education Course “Families in Business: From Generation to Generation” at Harvard Business School. He is a CPA, Certified Management Accountant and Certified Fraud Examiner. Mr. Smith is Certified in Succession Assurance ™ and holds a Certificate in Family Business Advising with Fellow Status.
Mr. Smith, a former partner with Ernst & Young, with over 40 years serving the financial management of closely held and family businesses. Mr. Smith also served for two years on the Management faculty at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the adjunct faculties at Tulane University and University of New Orleans.
He was named Financial Executive of the Year by the Institute of Management Accountants for IMA's Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and NW Florida region.
Mr. Smith is a contributing author to Intermediate Accounting, a widely adopted accounting textbook and to Occupational Fraud and Abuse which develops a unique, uniform fraud classification system. He published articles on business valuation and family business for Strategic Finance and the Financial Executive magazines. He authored an instructional and policy guidebook used nationwide by Ernst & Young. He is a past director and president of Financial Executive International’s New Orleans Chapter.
He served on Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer's and Baton Rouge Mayor Tom Ed McHugh's transition teams. Mr. Smith is Past Chairman of the 10 parish Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, Past Treasurer of the Downtown Kiwanis Club, and served as commissioner on the Downtown Development District.
