Background
Smith grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario, and spent many summers at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, where her mother, Joan Aspell Smith, was director of the Chautauqua Children"s School.
Smith grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario, and spent many summers at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, where her mother, Joan Aspell Smith, was director of the Chautauqua Children"s School.
Smith graduated from City Honors School in 1982. She went on to receive her South.B. in 1986 and an South.M. in 1988, both in mechanical engineering, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed her Master"s thesis work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory
She was previously a vice president of Google at Google, was vice president of business development at Google for nine years, and was general manager of Google.org and the former Chief Executive Officer of Planet Out. On September 4, 2014, she was named as the third (and first female) Chief Technology Officer of the United States, succeeding Todd Park. Following Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Smith worked at a variety of start-ups, including Apple in Tokyo and General Magic located in Mountain View, California, as product design lead on nascent smartphone technologies before she got involved with the launch of Planet Out in 1995.
She joined formally in 1996 as chief operating officer and from 1998 she was Planet Out"s Chief Executive Officer, where she presided over that company"s merger with Gay.com.
In 2003, she joined Google, where she rose to the vice president of business development, leading new business development and early-stage partnerships across Google"s global engineering and product teams. She led many early acquisitions, including Keyhole (Google Earth), Where2Tech (Google Maps), and Picasa, and later also took over as general manager of Google"s philanthropic arm, Google.org.
Smith co-hosts Google"s Solve for X think tank. In 2012, she started Google"s "Women Techmakers" diversity initiative.
Smith serves on the board of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as on the advisory boards for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, DRAPER, and Technology Review and serves on the board of Vital Voices.
Smith has contributed to a broad range of engineering projects, including a bicycle lock, space station construction program, and solar cookstoves. She is an active proponent of Science Technology Engineering And Mathematics education and innovation. World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2001, 2002
In 2012 and 2013, Smith was listed by Out magazine as one of the 50 most powerful LGBT people in the United States
Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford, 2003-2004
Top 25 Women on the Web, 2000
Upside Magazine 100 Digital Elite, 1999 and 2000
Advertising Age i.20, 1999
GLAAD Interactive Media Award for Internet Leadership, 1999
Charging Buffalo Award, 2015.
She serves on the boards of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Vital Voices, is a member of the United States Agency for International Development Advisory Committee on Voluntary Aid and co-founded the Malala Fund. She was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology student team that designed, built and raced a solar car 2000 miles across the Australian outback in the first cross-continental solar car race.