Dana Smith

It's not the absence of fear. It's choosing to move forward in spite of everything. Anyone that's successful in whatever capacity they are, it wasn't because it was easy. It was because they chose to have the grit, the desire, and the passion to move forward anyway. There's never going to not be obstacles, there's never not going to be anxiety. You have to do it anyway. There's a difference between inspiration and discipline. I've never let any of my personal struggles derail my career. I didn't have any gaps in jobs. Anytime I left a job, it was because I had another opportunity, and it was my choice. Even after going through a horrific personal tragedy 25 years ago when I was in a mass shooting and got shot in the leg, requiring emergency surgery with 2 plates and 12 screws, I was thrown right back into work after just 3 weeks. I was even reprimanded for being late when I couldn't drive and had to get rides to work. I realized nobody gives a shit what happened to you when it comes to work. I still wanted this. I still needed this. I had just bought a house. I had to put the lowest me on the back burner, put my life back together, and work on the mental health struggle and the physical in tandem with staying in the professional world and having a responsibility to an organization. It was learning to navigate my own personal demons and struggles and the anxieties that come with having gone through what I've been through, to keep your eye on the prize.

I didn't receive specific formal career advice, but my mom was a huge inspiration to me. She was successful in her career as the Director of Marketing for AT&T back when payphones were still a thing. She went back to school when I was a kid and got her MBA, so my own mother was an inspiration and influential to me personally, knowing that I was going to pursue a track of being a working woman. I also made friends with a woman I'm still friends with today who's maybe not quite 10 years older than me. I admired her because she was successful in the industry I was coming into, and we became best friends. We've worked together in capacities in and out of jobs, and now she's semi-retired in Florida. A lot of the career decisions that I made along the way, I would bounce off of her, just because it was nice to have someone that I admired in a similar position, in a similar industry to talk to.

Don't be afraid to be heard and seen. Sometimes there's the keep your head down, just do your job mentality, but don't be afraid to command attention, or don't be afraid to say and contribute and to be loud. You just have to hold your own, especially if you worked hard for the degree. You've got the opportunity to do the job. When I'm at a conference and notice that it's 100 to 1 at nighttime, or even still, let's say 25 to 1, you have to know you earned your spot. You have every right to be there, and not be afraid. Don't shrink into the background because you realize there's more or less women in here. Make yourself visible and inspire other young girls to follow your lead, that we can be successful in this industry. Build your network. Make sure if you walk into a conference and there's a lot of men, of course network with everyone, but make sure you connect with the women, because there's power in numbers. Now I'm 25 years ahead of the incoming females to the company, and I try to reach out. Those females may not always reach out to the young ones, but I try to, because I know what it was like, especially given what I was going through when I was 26. Leaning on people, I think, makes it a lot easier.

There's still a lot of challenges. The company that I work for, Siemens, is one of the oldest, largest companies in the world, so there's a lot of challenges to maybe go for a promotion or go for a role, because they do promote within and there's hundreds of applicants, just like any job. That's a challenge. But there is opportunity too, today for women that I don't think even existed 25 years ago. We're in a much better position now. We have the ability to attract females to the industry, and there are far more women coming into the field than there used to be.

Integrity is most important to me. Honesty and integrity. There's a personal influence in my own decision to keep working. Bad days at work are still better than the worst thing I've had to face. The worst day at work kind of makes me remind myself in gratitude that I'm grateful for the opportunity. There were people that didn't survive that incident 25 years ago. I was grateful to still have the opportunity. I've lived half my life now in this post-incident period, and it's just being grateful. I do have the opportunity to still be here. I did have the opportunity to have children. I did have the opportunity to be awarded this role within the big company and trusted to do the job. I also didn't want it to define me at all. I didn't want anybody to pity me or think that she may have some demons, she might not be right for this job. I was absolutely relentless in my pursuit to be where I was and who I was before that happened. What it gave me was an immense amount of grit and resiliency. I was going to claw my way to what I thought was a normal life despite what I lived through.