AccuWeather CEO accepts prestigious regional award. Here’s how he got to this point
Last month, Steven R. Smith won a regional EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his leadership of AccuWeather. Smith, along with 10 other award winners in the Greater Philadelphia region, will head to California in November for the finals.
EY is the global organization made up of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, one of the world’s “Big Four” accounting networks. And its annual awards are some of the most prestigious business honors among company leaders.
Smith didn’t set out to win such a high-profile business award. But, thanks to a steady rise through the ranks of AccuWeather, he earned it through innovation and a desire to find perfection.
Getting started with AccuWeather
Smith started working at AccuWeather, a global weather service based in State College, as an intern in 1997, climbed the company’s ranks, and became CEO in 2023. He succeeded Joel N. Myers, a renowned meteorologist and the founder of AccuWeather, and is the first person outside the Myers family to hold the CEO title.
Smith’s passion for meteorology — and AccuWeather — started from a young age. According to family lore, he was known to run around the house lifting window shades during snowstorms, eager to see the weather from all sides. Growing up in Philadelphia, Smith consumed AccuWeather on television, in the newspaper and on the radio.
“I had AccuWeather surrounding me,” he told the Centre Daily Times.
This immersion continued in college, when Smith joined the company as a summer intern. After graduating from Penn State with a degree in meteorology, he was hired as a full-time meteorologist, joining the ranks of weathermen he’d admired for years. Early in his career, Smith was tasked with briefing Dave Roberts, the main weatherman on the Philadelphia station Smith watched growing up.
Though green, Smith was heard. He started at AccuWeather just months after the Internet came out, and as a young employee, he helped the company adapt to that invention. Relying on the coding expertise he gained in college and his interest in technology, Smith brought new ideas to a team that spanned generations.
A knack for innovation distinguished Smith, and in 2007, he took on a senior role as the company’s chief information officer, becoming the first meteorologist at AccuWeather to oversee information technology. He later served as chief digital officer, digital media president and president before becoming CEO.
“He’s been groomed for this,” said Myers, now the executive chairman of AccuWeather, “and I promoted him regularly.”
Looking ahead
In each role, Smith embraced new technologies and the creativity required to leverage them. During Smith’s time at AccuWeather, the company experimented, eventually harnessing the Internet and mobile technology to deliver timely forecasts to audiences around the world.
That ingenuity helped AccuWeather remain competitive against other weather services, including the National Weather Service.
“The company has been built on creativity, innovation, doing the best,” Myers said. “Every day is the Super Bowl of weather, in all respects.”
Today, AccuWeather reaches more than 1.5 billion people worldwide, according to its website. It serves nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies, which rely on AccuWeather’s warnings to avoid the potentially disastrous effects of weather. The company has helped save hundreds of billions of dollars in property losses and many lives — tens of thousands of them, its website says.
AccuWeather’s mission to protect people and property motivates Smith. CEO by title but meteorologist by trade, Smith remains committed to the pursuit of a perfect forecast.
“If we could get partly sunny and nice right, we will get the extreme weather events right. And if we get the extreme weather events correct, then there’s an opportunity to save lives,” he said.
