Executive Director & Founder

Glenn Smith is the Founder and Executive Director of Life Connections of the Carolinas, Inc. In 1974, when Glenn was 21 years old and still in college he founded The New Dawn Youth Center in Buckhannon W. Va. a group home for at-risk youth. A year later in 1975, he became the President of the W.V Child Care Association. Five years later, while attending Cornell University’s School of Human Ecology, he worked for the New York State Division of Youth. In 1981, after moving to North Carolina he became the Area Coordinator at Lutheran Family Services. Six years later Glenn founded The Family Connection, a Private Counseling Center which grew to become one of the largest practices in Charlotte.

Wanting to get back to direct services in the community Glenn founded Life Connections Inc. in 1997 and started teaching life skill courses to incarcerated men in the Mecklenburg County Jail. He also served as senior faculty with the International Association of Applied Control Theory, traveling all over the US and Canada, China, and Australia to teach the tenets of Applied Control Theory. In 2017 he established Life Connections of the Carolinas, Inc. a 501c3 with the mission to “keep kids out of jail and keep families connected”. Glenn is passionate about the agency’s DASH programs which develop adolescents and strengthen homes. His goal for Life Connections of the Carolinas is to build a sustainable, thriving organization and leave it in a position to operate