As a certified B Corp, Geek Girl Tech’s mission has always been to make an impact on women in tech. We’re currently working on our 3rd B Corp certification and focusing a lot of time and energy on our Impact Business Model. We’re creating better programming around our Workforce Development program that brings in women that already have some level of technical expertise, providing them with work and pay at a living wage all while providing more training, usually related to cybersecurity.
In 2020, Geek Girl Tech made its second and third full time hires, one of those people being Tif Smith.
A little background about Tif – after earning a Degree in Literature, Tif worked for a non-profit but quickly realized she wanted to get into tech. So, she went back to school and earned a Bachelors of Science degree. She landed her first technical job with Apple as a helpdesk technician. After a couple more help desk roles and cybersecurity internships, she landed a role at JP Morgan Chase doing incident response. Her next role was with Verizon as a security Advisor, where she was the point of contact for clients. At this point in her career, she had two degrees but was never really able to do the work that she wanted to do. She said in our interview, “what attracted me to Geek Girl Tech was the [opportunity] to become more technical”.
It wasn’t always rainbows and sunshine however, and Tif met challenges along her career journey, not unlike what other women face today.
“I felt my voice wasn’t heard [at JP Morgan Chase]. I really learned that I had to fight and be my own advocate, just to get training opposed to young white males who just came out of college and everything was given to them. And that’s also why I left that environment. I wouldn’t be able to grow in the way that I wanted to.”
She also talked about her experience working at Verizon, where she felt unheard and disrespected. She brought up client issues with her boss who ignored them. She said she was made to “tough it out”, something she commonly found in corporate America. “That’s why I left and was so relieved coming to GGT and I didn’t have to worry about being in those meetings where I’m telling you the issue that I’m having and you’re not being supportive” she said, in reference to the struggles she faced at Verizon.
When Tif finally came to work for Geek Girl Tech for the first time in 2020, she focused on helping us find the right security awareness vendors for our clients. She also received training on helpdesk trouble shooting and learned a lot of new skills, especially when it came to security work. She said her learnings about keeping businesses secure and using tools such as 1Password, MFA, and firewalls, helped her eventually secure her new role in 2021 at Secberus doing cloud security and creating new policies.
Then, in early 2024 we were super excited when Tif wanted to come back for some part-time work with our team. She had gained new experience since we had last worked together and we asked her to help us standardize our Data Security Assessments for our clients. She worked on multiple assessments and created a template that we use today.
In around October of 2024 Tif was able to land a new role at Earnst and Young, and said that “gaining the experience with those assessments and reporting helped me feel prepared for my interviews with Ernest and Young. So, that was really helpful”.
She also mentioned that in general, working at Geek Girl Tech gave her “the confidence to be this badass woman in tech.” We agree Tif, you are one badass woman in tech!
Tif has been working for Earnest and Young since October 2024 as a Senior Digital Risk Cloud Services Consultant. She’s certainly come a long way since those days at JP Morgan Chase.
Thanks so much for sharing your story with us Tif! You can connect with Tif on LinkedIn.
