Stephen J. R. Smith (2 June 1951, Ottawa)[1] is a Canadian businessman who is the Executive Chairman and co-founder of First National Financial Corporation.
[2] Smith graduated with a degree of Electrical Engineering from Queen's University in 1972 and went on to get a Master's of Science in economics from the London School of Economics.
[citation needed] In 1988, he co-founded First National Financial Corporation, the largest non-bank lender of mortgages in Canada.
[3] In 2015, he gave to $50 million to Queen's University at Kingston, after which Queen's business school was renamed to Smith School of Business.
On November 2, 2023, he paid $100 million for Queen's engineering department to be renamed to the Stephen J. R. Smith Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.