John Smothers
Board Member
and Co-founder
RSI was founded in 2009 by John Smothers and his late wife, inspired by their struggles with infertility.
While chairing the Lubbock Regional Bioscience Initiative, John was fortunate to meet Dr. Samuel Prien, Dr. Dustie Johnson, and Dr. Lindsay Penrose, and he was fascinated with their research into male infertility and, in particular, the methods used to collect and process sperm.
John, with the researchers as co-founders, licensed the technology from Texas Tech University. Initially, RSI was a passion project, focused on research. In 2017, the company relaunched through the Texas Tech Innovation Hub's Accelerator program, securing grants that revived the dream of bringing their product to market.
In 2018, John's wife passed away after a long battle with cancer. Motivated by his promise to honor their dream, John took a leap of faith and dedicated himself full-time to growing RSI. Since then, RSI has remained steadfast in its mission to help with couples' fertility challenges.
John remains involved with RSI as a Board Member.