BIOGRAPHY

OF TSV FOUNDER,

CARTER VINCENT SMITH

CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION.   Carter’s concern for the world’s people began as a child at the dinner table. His father was an immigrant’s son who surpassed his dream of captaining a ferry boat to become a much decorated US Navy Admiral who fought in three wars. His mother escaped from Macon Georgia to marry his father in Shanghai in a romance memorialized in the epic film “Sand Pebbles”. His uncle,  a China expert, ambassador  and contender for Secretary of State,  was a frequent visitor, even after his career was tragically sacrificed to the McCarthy era communist witch hunts.

Carter was raised on both coasts and survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor by hiding under a bed. Later he graduated from Lakeside in Seattle (a nerdy kid like a later graduate – Bill Gates). With scholarships to MIT and Harvard, Carter chose MIT, hoping to save the world with quantum physics.

However, at MIT, he faltered, shaken by not being the most brilliant mind there – and still in adolescent rebellion against authority. However, he stayed in Boston to become one of IBM’s very first computer programmers (1957) and then returned to MIT to do pioneering robotic research with Claude Shannon (the father of modern digital communications and information theory).

After graduation, Carter developed computer models at Boeing that maximized hypothetical millions of Russians killed for various nuclear strategies and thousands of pigs-in-overcoats killed by depleted uranium warheads. His disgust at the latter caused a switch to commercial aircraft where his computer models led to Boeing’s expansion in the commercial market place and the termination of a strike by 50,000 machinists.

Boeing also gave Carter a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship to the University of Washington where he received a MS in Math and a PhC in Computer Science – doing early research in Artificial Intelligence (but failing to train an early 1970’s era computer to learn like a Piaget child).

BUSINESS CAREER.  Later as a national and international consultant in information technology and financial operations, Carter developed work and profitability models that saved client’s millions and doubled Citibank’s Credit Card profits. A grievous assignment for a Mexico City stockbrokerage led him back to the states.

As head of IT research and planning for a Japanese owned bank, Carter was responsible for managing a project portfolio of over $100m. Following a successful on-budget $25m Y2K effort, he championed the bank’s move into the web era.   Currently, Carter is the Chief Information Officer and a founding partner of LSI Outsourcing.

Throughout his career Carter has shown a unique ability to understand the crux of a business process, to utilize the best of technology and management techniques, to obtain consensus, to quantify the project’s costs and benefits, to obtain funding by preparing a clear business proposal, and to minimize risk by putting together successful implementation teams.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY.   But that is only the business side of the story. Carter’s spiritual journey started with his ego-smashing problems at MIT. His difficulties and self perception led to such “existential angst” (a classmate compared him to Camus’ “The Stranger”) that even marriage and children did not help – eventually leading to depression and alcoholism.

Reluctantly choosing a recovery program over suicide in 1974 cracked Carter’s lifelong agnosticism – and opened him up to spiritual power or God, “the Great Reality found deep down within us”.

In the 30 years since then, Carter has:

• Spoken to thousands and worked personally with hundreds of recovering addicts/alcoholics on how to live happily in this world without chemical assistance (he is still very active).
• Taught (with a small staff he hired and obtained bank funding for) a thousand uptight banker–technologists to stretch their human potential. (as trained by Bob Mowab).
• Was one of the very first American Firewalkers – in the backyard of a Beverly hills mansion – in 1983 with Tony Robbins (scared to death. )
• Pioneered Quality Circles in western banking.
• Facilitated Sheri Carter Scott’s workshops, supported Marshal Thurber at “Money and You”, learned to trust his own power tramping the desert with Castaneda, did 50 rebirths, the Christ Training, and the rigorous Six Month Training with the World Healing Organization. Took his whole family to est.
• Relived a dozen past lives under the guidance of Dick Sutphen and the lovely Chris Griscom in Galisco New Mexico, intensively studied the clarity and vision of the metaphysics of Seth, and received personal interviews and guidance from the powerful channeled entities Dr Peebles and Bashar.
• Utilized his training as a shamanic counselor by Michael Harner to guide terminal AIDS patients and others on healing journeys to the upper and lower shamanic worlds.
• Was an intensive 15 year student of the non-dual mystic Christianity expressed by “A Course in Miracles” – meeting most of the founders and practicing the precepts daily.

• Trained for last dozen years as a Buddhist – extensive retreats/ teachings/ initiations in Rockies, Nova Scotia, Himalayas, Nepal and Dharmsala by Geshe Gelson, the Dalai Lama, Garchen Rinpoche, Ruth Gilbert, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodren, Chogyam Trungpa, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and Acharya Allyn Lyon – including teacher training, refuge and bodhisattva vows, dathun,  sutrayanna and vajrayana seminary. (His Buddhist name is SengGe NgagGi – Lion of Speech.)  Carter teaches/ instructs regularly as a certified Shambhala Meditation Instructor.

  WITH THE DALAI LAMA IN DHARMSALA

• Trained 30 days in the intense body
  scanning Vipassana techniques of S.N. Goenka. Is an enthusiastic and ongoing student of the elegant and precise Vipassana meditation techniques of the Buddhist Shingon monk and Zen teacher Shinzen Young (over half a dozen retreats).

• Teaches/leads “Three mindful meditation practices useful in stopping habitual negative egoic reactions in life situations” — with recovering alcoholics, Buddhists,  Terminal Island prisoners, students and others.

Inspired by  an intense study of the works of Ken Wilber – considered the “most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times”,  Carter researched many other sources and utilized his first hand experience with the positive and negative impacts of globalization – from impoverished beggars to the stressed out wealthy — in order to develop the Twelve Stage model of human development that provides insight into our accelerating evolution of consciousness.  

This winter, attracted by Andrew Cohen’s work with Ken Wilber, and Andrew’s teachings on  collective enlightenment,  Carter attended a nine day intensive and became an Evolutionary Enlightenment Practitioner. He is currently working on resolving the different Buddhist approaches to awakening with the disarmingly simple and practical but surprisingly  deep and robust teachings of Abraham-Hicks.

Carter is an avid skier, surfer, and hiker – has studied Tai Chi, Yoga, and recently received  a black belt in Tai Kwan Do (he suggests doing

this at 16, not 60).

In his spare time Carter travels and helps his artistic and stage designer wife, Franny, or visits their six children and nine grandchildren.