Ella Smith is a professor of business administration at Tuck and works in the field of organizational behavior. She has previously served on the faculties of Belk College of Business Administration, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale's School of Management and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The research interests of Professor Smith focus on the career and life histories of professional African-American and European-American women. She is currently inquiring into issues of work/life balance. She has served as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and to many public institutions. Her scholarly works have been reported in many top publications, and her book, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity, has been widely acclaimed.