I'm Eric Smith. I know the weight of the chair.

Peer advisory is relational before it is anything else, so you should know who is in the room. I spent fifteen years as a people executive inside fast-growing Puget Sound companies. I helped build Lenati from a loose collection of contractors into one of Seattle's most respected consulting brands and served as its Chief People Officer through its acquisition. I stayed through the next one too: PK grew from 2,500 people to 6,000 before it was sold to Concentrix, a publicly traded firm of more than 300,000. After that I ran my own firm, Fobes Hill Consulting, leading culture and communications for a 3,000-person division of Microsoft while AI remade the work in real time. I have since retired the firm. The only business I own today is C12 Seattle North.

So when I say I know the weight leaders carry, here is what I mean. I watched a brand I spent eight years building get absorbed: its best practices adopted without credit, its culture diluted one policy at a time, the name itself eventually retired. I watched people I had hired, trained, and championed grow disillusioned inside a company that had quietly traded quality for profit. And I carried it the way most leaders do. Alone, and telling everyone I was fine.

It caught up with me. When my season at Concentrix ended, I found myself unemployed and burned out in every way a person can be: physically, emotionally, spiritually. Humbled, I finally saw what I had done. I had idolized my career over my marriage, my family, my church, and my faith. I submitted it all to God and asked Him what to do next. The answer did not come as a lightning bolt. It came over years of consulting work and recovered discipleship, learning to walk obediently and humbly with Him.

Then, in the spring of 2025, I met the CEO of C12 at a conference. In C12 I saw the end of my disjointed life: work, faith, and family merged into one effort to love God and love my neighbor. And I saw the lever I had been reaching for my whole career. As an HR leader I advocated for employees one program at a time, putting myself in their shoes, asking the questions they did not know to ask. A C12 forum does that at the source. Reach one CEO and you reach everyone that CEO affects: employees, families, customers, suppliers, a community. I believe it is the most potent way to bring the gospel to a region.

Saying yes cost something. There has never been a C12 Chair in the Pacific Northwest; I am the first. I let go of my career's momentum, gave up income to build this, and began saying out loud what I had kept quiet for years, in a region where faith is not exactly celebrated. I bet what I had and asked my wife and family to trust me. I tell you that because joining a forum will be a disruptive decision for you too. C12 has a phrase, Do>Talk, and it found me at the right moment: to obey is better than sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22).

The territory is simply home. I grew up in Seattle, graduated college in Bellingham, and have lived in Edmonds, Lynden, and now Snohomish. I have been married 33 years, with three kids and three grandkids, and we worship at Crossway Fellowship in Lynnwood. When I am not chairing, I am on a mountain bike, on skis, or in the garden, which is most of why I will never leave this climate.

If you visit a forum I chair, the first thing you will notice is the authenticity, trust, and engagement in the room. If you lead a company between Seattle and the Canadian border, my job is to make sure you never have to lead it alone.