Leelyn Smith Names John Renaldi Chief AI Officer

GENEVA, Ill., Aug. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Leelyn Smith, an integrated advisory firm serving families and business owners across the country, today announced the appointment of John Renaldi as Chief AI Officer.

Renaldi brings a technology leadership background that is rare in the wealth management industry. He held VP and GM roles at Google and Motorola, where he led engineering, design, and product teams, and he oversaw early Gen AI-enabled capabilities. He holds ten patents spanning machine learning, software, and hardware, and co-founded Jiobit, a wearable technology startup that was acquired by Life360 (NASDAQ: LIF) in 2021. He currently serves as a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering where John developed and teaches the Applied AI curriculum, as well as the University of Illinois's Grainger School of Engineering, and advises companies in the use of Generative AI including Netgear, Realtor.com, Life360, PayNearMe, and Techstars.