Smart Shorties

Company Bios

• Alex Nesmith

  May 13, 2008 0 Comments

  

  Known in industry circles as "Al E.Cat", co-founder and President Alex Nesmith has worked with some music's biggest superstars such as Outkast, AKON, Dave Hollister, Jamelia, Ronald Isley, Avant, Busta Rhymes and Goodie Mob. As producer/engineer and songwriter, he has received several gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards for his work with R&B mega-artists Dru Hill, Divine, Silk and Keith Sweat.

  Alex has a long, celebrated history of achievement in music. At the young age of nine he began playing the saxophone, practicing diligently and developing a sincere affection for jazz music. Around the age of twelve, he began playing in popular go-go bands around the Washington, D.C. area. Upon turning fourteen years old, his mother chose for him to attend St. John’s College High School in N.W. Washington, where he auditioned for and won a music scholarship. This led to a seat in the prestigious St. John’s Jazz Ensemble. As the featured saxophonist within the group he toured countries such as Portugal, Spain, Taiwan and Japan. During his senior year, Alex would play with the Jazz Ensemble locally as well as across the country performing up to four shows a week! His talents subsequently won him both a music and athletic scholarship to Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

  Upon graduating from Catholic University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, Alex landed a freelance job as the house engineer at the world famous Blues Alley Jazz Club in Washington, D.C. This was a pivotal step for the young twenty-one year old. It was here that he would get his first taste of "the big time" by engineering the live club performances of superstars such as WAR, Angela Bofill, Pieces of a Dream, Roy Hargrove, Special EFX, Arturo Sandoval, Ramsey Lewis, and many other musical giants.

  Alex decided to further his education by attending the prestigious Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts in Orlando, FL where he received an Associate’s Degree in Recording Engineering and graduated in the top 5 percent of his class. Upon graduation from Full Sail, he returned to the Washington, D.C. area and continued working as a freelance engineer. Word of his talent began to spread around town which led to a friendship with Ed Eastridge, owner of Sony subsidiary Big Mo Records. Under the tutelage of Eastridge, Alex would engineer the music of popular jazz artists Joey DeFrancesco, the late Danny Gatton and the Tommy Lepson Band. He began to build a pretty reputable track record but longed for bigger projects with more national presence.

  In 1994 Alex headed for the “Motown of the South” also known as Atlanta, GA. It is here that he formed his company Hit Mecca One, Inc. and opened a private recording studio called The Hit Mecca. In the fall of 1996 the industry would finally begin to take notice of Alex's many emerging talents when he received the mixing engineer credit for seven songs on Keith Sweat's wildly successful self-titled album. Included on the album were the crossover hits "Twisted" and "Nobody". Those two songs would go on to be two of the top selling singles that year according to Billboard Magazine and rocket Alex onto the national scene. The album itself would go on to sell four million copies and present him with his first multi-platinum plaque.

  In December of 1997, Alex introduced his talents to the European market by traveling to London with noted EMI writer/producer Fitzgerald Scott to co-produce a remake of the U.S. smash hit “Freak Me” with BMG International pop group Another Level. Upon its release, the song went straight to No.1 on the U.K. charts giving Alex his first gold record overseas. Over the course of the next three years, Alex would continue to emerge as one of the industry's rising talents by producing/engineering projects for the Geffen, Universal, Elektra and LaFace Record labels. In November of 1998 he realized a dream come true by engineering the No.1 record in the country, the runaway hit song "Lately" by Red Ant recording artist Divine.

  Anyone who has worked with Alex knows that he is a tireless workaholic that demands perfection in his music. He is widely recognized in industry circles as a hot new producer/songwriter and dreams of one day winning a Grammy Award as "Producer of the Year".

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• Christine Smith

  May 13, 2008 0 Comments

  Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
  

  Christine L. Smith's calling as a teacher began in the year 2000. She has taught elementary courses (4th – 7th grade) math and high school (7th – 12th grade) science. Immediately she recognized an ongoing theme: students had trouble memorizing information! In order to become an effective teacher, she began studying neuroscience to find out how the brain works. After years of very thorough research, Christine’s success as a teacher has been her intense understanding of how a child’s brain is stimulated and retains information.
  

  As co-founder of Spark The Mind, Christine Smith has joined with multi-platinum music producer Alex Nesmith to harness the power of hip-hop to teach inner city kids math. One day while talking about her concerns with Alex, he commented that, “…it’s funny how kids can memorize these complicated hip hop lyrics, but cannot remember their math facts.” That’s when a light bulb went off! Christine questioned, “what if I use music to teach my students?” The result was the “Math Facts” song.

  Christine had success in bringing math scores for the Ohio Achievement Test (standardized state test) in her school system for 6th grade from 0% passing in 2004-2005 to 48% passing in 2005-2006. In order to achieve these high success rates, Christine had to find a way to reach students that was different than the way they had been learning. She found large populations of students were lacking in basic math skills. In order to teach current grade level State Standards, she had to come up with fun and exciting ways to stimulate the students.

  Christine's brain-based method of teaching had earned her some of the following recognitions:

  • 2007 Strathmore's Who's Who in Education

  • 2007 Teacher of Year for State of Ohio nomination

  • 2007 Citizen of the Year nomination

  • 2007 L'Oreal Woman of Worth nomination

  • 2007 Walmart Teacher of the Year nomination

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