Winthrop H. Smith Jr. (“Win”)

Winthrop H. Smith Jr.  (“Win”) is the former Chairman and CEO of Summit Ventures NE, LLC, which owned Sugarbush Resort in Warren, Vermont. He sold Sugarbush to Alterra Mountain Company in January 2020 and retired in September of 2020. Born in New York City, Win attended the Buckley School before entering Deerfield Academy. He received his BA in Political Science from Amherst College and his MBA in Finance from Wharton University. 
 
In 1974, Winthrop H. Smith Jr. came to work for the company that his late father had co-led for twenty-one years until his death in 1961.  Starting in the “bullpen” as an entry-level associate, Win rose steadily, working not only in investment banking but also in marketing, human resources, finance, and sales. He also held management positions in both the Capital Markets Group and the Private Client Group (now known as Wealth Management). 
 
During the final decade of his twenty-seven-year career at Merrill, Mr. Smith was an Executive Vice President of Merrill Lynch & Co. and a member of the Executive Committee. As Chairman of Merrill Lynch International, he led one of Merrill Lynch & Co.'s four business units with 9,000 employees, over $2.8 billion in revenues, and client assets of $180 billion. He retired from Merrill in January 2002 because he could not agree with the future direction of the firm. In 2013, Win Smith published his book, “Catching Lightning in a Bottle -- How Merrill Lynch Revolutionized the Financial World”. It is the first complete history of Merrill Lynch and traces its impact on the world of finance from the day Charlie Merrill opened his one-man shop on January 6, 1914, to the final shareholder meeting prior to its acquisition by Bank of America on December 5, 2008. The book was republished in 2014 by John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

He purchased Sugarbush from the American Ski Company on September 10, 2001, and after retiring from Merrill Lynch moved to Vermont to begin his second career in the ski industry.
 
Winthrop Smith served as a director of Eaton Vance Corporation in Boston from 2004 until it was purchased by Morgan Stanley in March of 2021. He formerly served on the Boards of AGF Management Limited and Richardson GMP Limited in Toronto where he was Lead Director on both and also served on the Board of the Richardson Financial Group Limited in Winnipeg, Canada. He is currently on the Advisory Board of Group RMC Ltd in Montreal.
 
As a Vermont business owner, Mr. Smith served on the boards of the Vermont Business Roundtable and the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and was chair of the board of both. He is currently Chair of The Nature Conservancy Vermont chapter. He served as a board member of the Vermont Ski Areas Association for several years as well as the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) which he also chaired. In 2022 he was awarded NSAA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Win was appointed by then Governor Jim Douglas to chair the Governor's Commission on the Future of State Parks. Governor Shumlin also appointed him to serve on the Governor's Advisory Council on Health Care Financing.