VERONICA S. SMITH
Data Justice Consultant

Veronica S. Smith partners with people to collect, interpret, analyze, and tell stories with data to find and evolve social, education, environmental, health, and organizational solutions that uplift LGBTQIA2S+, women, immigrants, and other marginalized communities.

She became a data scientist in the 2000s and founded data2insight to use data to advance social justice because she saw that people were drowning in data and starved for knowledge and wisdom.

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. What drives Veronica is putting valuable, appropriate, and equity-focused 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.

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.

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.

Veronica loves dancing and animals of all kinds, daily walks with her wife Natalie and friends, reading/listening to audio books, and gardening.