Cultural Diversity Roster

As CEO of Against All Odds Productions, Smolan’s projects focus on capturing the human face of emerging topics and specialize in the design and execution of large-scale crowdsourced global projects that combine compelling storytelling with state-of-the-art technology.

His projects result in bestselling illustrated books, TV specials, apps, exhibits and hundreds of millions of media impressions – including New York Times bestsellers and cross-media projects that have been featured on the covers of publications around the globe (i.e. Time, GEO, Fortune, Stern, and The London Sunday Times). More than five million of his books adorn coffee tables around the world, including A Day in the Life of America, The Human Face of Big Data, INSIDE TRACKS, American 24/7, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, The Power to Heal, One Digital Day, From Alice to Ocean, and Blue Planet Run.

Smolan’s book From Alice to Ocean (2013) is based on a National Geographic cover story that he photographed about Robyn Davidson, a young Australian woman who traveled solo across the Australia outback accompanied only by camels and her loyal dog, Digitty. Her adventure is considered one of the five most memorable stories in National Geographic‘s 125-year history. Davidson’s narrative of her trip, Tracks, became a classic and bestseller. The book has now been turned into a film by the Oscar Winning producers of The Kings Speech, starring Mia Wasikowska as Davidson and Adam Driver as Smolan. The movie premiered to glowing reviews at the recent Venice, Telluride and Toronto Film festivals and was released in the U.S. by the Weinstein Brothers in September 2014.

Smolan’s most recent project was The Human Face of Big Data, which looks at how all of our devices are creating a planetary nervous system and that the massive gathering and analyzing of data in real time is suddenly allowing us to address some of humanity’s biggest challenges, including pollution, world hunger and illness. On December 4, 2012, the book was delivered to 10,000 world leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, heads of media companies, Oscar, Pulitzer Prize and Olympic winners, and other notable figures in 50 countries around the world.

The Human Face of Big Data book was a best seller and to date has sold more than 55,000 copies. The TED book club also chose the book as one of their official selections and sent a copy to all 1700 TED attendees. Last year, the “Human Face” iPad app won the WEBBY for best educational app, Apple featured it on the front page of 42 of its App stores around the world and Adweek awarded it the “Tablet App of the Year.” Additionally, the one-hour documentary based on the project recently won The Boston Film Festival’s “Best Cinematography Award.”

Smolan’s newest best-seller called The Good Fight: America’s Ongoing Struggle for Justice, vividly depicts America’s long struggle with the fight for equality. Smolan created the book with the goal to remind readers of the many battles Americans have fought over the past 100 years against hatred, bigotry, racism, misogyny, and homophobia — and how much of this progress is at risk right now. The Good Fight became one of Amazon’s top 100 books within a week of release, and was recently chosen as the official TED BOOKCLUB selection. People Magazine also added the book to its list of the top 10 best gift books of the year. Smolan’s book also comes with the free Good Fight Viewer app, which adds an interactive photography experience to the text.

Now having spent more than two years immersed in the world of Big Data and speaking with dozens of the scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs pioneering this space, Smolan is convinced Big Data is going to have 1,000 times more of an impact on our lives than the Internet. In his presentations, he seeks to connect and visualize Big Data into meaningful ways where the human race can have an entirely new set of tools to use in shaping the future. From his “Day in the Life” photography series to his current projects, Rick Smolan is a force for exploring culture in unique ways.