Dr. Alyshia Smith, North Carolina native and alumna of UNC School of Nursing, joined the Durham VA Health Care System as the Executive Director in May 2022.  As the Executive Director, Dr. Smith provides executive leadership and strategic direction for this complex health care system that provides a full array of clinical services to nearly 80,000 Veterans over 12 sites of care and 27 counties in North Carolina.  She has direct responsibility for a $950 million operating budget and over 3600 employees.  The Durham VA has several major medical education affiliates with over 1700 trainees and an innovative and robust research program.    

Prior to joining the Durham VA Health Care System, Dr. Smith served as the Executive Director for the Phoenix VA Health Care System. Vietnam Veterans of America acknowledged Dr. Smith's leadership contributions in 2020 by awarding her the Vietnam Veterans of America Achievement Medal. In May 2022, she was recognized with a Red Jacket from Tuskegee Airmen, Archer-Ragsdale Arizona Chapter and inducted as an at-large member. 

Before Dr. Smith was appointed Executive Director of Phoenix VA Health Care System, she was their Associate Director of Patient Care Services from 2015 to 2019. From 2010 to 2015, she was the Deputy Chief Nurse of the Washington DC VA Medical Center. She also held a 90-day assignment as the Acting Deputy Chief Nursing Officer for VA's national program office in Washington, DC.

As a daughter and a niece of four Vietnam Veterans, service to others has been in Dr. Smith’s family legacy, and from a young age, she knew that she wanted to carry on that tradition of service in her life. Before starting with VA in 2010, Dr. Smith made her way through the nursing leadership ranks from 1989 to 2010 at a not-for-profit, 900-bed academic and research center and one of the largest and busiest level 1 trauma hospitals in the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan region.

Dr. Smith holds both a Doctor of Nursing Practice and a Master of Science from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has served as clinical faculty with nursing programs at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland. She is board certified by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as a Nurse Executive, Advanced, and is an active member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.