VERONICA S. SMITH
Lead Executive & Equitable Scientist

Veronica S. Smith brings over 30 years of experience working with clients to assess strengths and opportunities for improvement within their workplace related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and creating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive.

Veronica has been immersed in advancing equity, first in the environmentally friendly design and construction industry, then in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, and the non-profit, philanthropic, and government sectors. She became a data scientist in the 2000s and founded data2insight to use data to advance racial, gender, environmental, and social justice.

When it comes to her work, Veronica gets up in the morning to partner with people to do better when it comes to creating organizations and communities where people and the planet can thrive. She is incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to the why and how diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI+B) contributes to thriving organizations and communities as well as skilled at facilitating application of the knowledge to achieve the desired impact. What drives Veronica is putting valuable and appropriate tools and practices into the hands of people so they can use them to improve the quality of their lives and achieve the results they truly desire.

Veronica has a multidisciplinary background because she enjoys drawing from both the arts and sciences in work and life. She earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree and worked in the design and construction industry in the early 90s, working for Seattle firms as well as starting her first business focused on designing exhibits, including environmentally friendly product and service exhibits for home shows. These experiences resulted in Veronica bringing design and systems thinking to everything she does.

Veronica’s organizational development and facilitation knowledge and skills were refined in the late 90s when she worked as a job developer, career coach, recruiter, and HR generalist in the tech sector.

Her data science and research skills were developed as she worked to earn her master’s degree in electrical engineering and became a research scientist at the University of Washington and as a data analyst at an evaluation and research firm before she started data2insight.

Her knowledge and skill as an equitable and inclusive leader have evolved for over 30 years (and continue to do so). And her Leadership Tomorrow Seattle experiences from 2010-12 contributed in large measure to data2insight’s braiding together multicultural organizational development and measurement, evaluation, and assessment into the application of equitable organizational implementation, learning, and improvement.

She also has a Certificate in the Advanced Study of Evaluation from Claremont Graduate University.

Veronica is actively engaged in open-access publishing to decolonize knowledge sharing in the measurement and evaluation field, partnering with higher education professionals to decolonize research methodologies, bringing playfulness to higher education spaces, and mentoring marginalized women in STEM.

Her community service over the last 30 years includes non-profit board service (Puget Sound Public Radio, The Pat Graney Dance Company, and Powerful Voices), volunteering for Technology Access Foundation Academy and Northwest Association of Biomedical Research middle school and high school STEM events, coaching women triathletes, mentoring for the Association of Women in Science (AWIS), and serving as the Washington State Million Women Mentors Co-chair since 2016.

Veronica loves dancing of all kinds, daily walks with her wife Natalie and pup Nellie and gardening.