Nicholas Boys Smith is the founding director of Create Streets, an independent research institute that encourages the creation of more and better urban homes with terraced streets  of houses and apartments rather than complex multistory buildings. It supports reforms to make the planning system more responsive to what people like in the built environment. Boys Smith was a member of both the U.K. Government’s Design Review Paneland the Estate Regeneration Panel chaired by Michael Heseltine, a former British deputy prime minister. He is a commissioner of Historic England, a senior research fellow at the University of Buckingham, and an academician of the Academy of Urbanism.

Prior to founding Create Streets, Boys Smith was a director at Lloyds Banking Group, a senior consultant at McKinsey & Co., and  a political adviser. He was secretary of the Tax Reform Commission for the Rt Hon George Osborne. Boys Smith earned an MPhil with Distinction at the University of Cambridge, where he was president of the Cambridge Union.