[4][5] She serves on the boards of MIT[6] and Vital Voices, was a member of the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Aid[7] and co-founded the Malala Fund.

[16] Following MIT, 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[17] before she got involved with the launch of Planet Out in 1995.

She joined formally in 1996 as COO and from 1998 she was Planet Out's Chief Executive Officer, where she expanded partnerships, built new business models, grew revenue and global users, raised venture funding, and later presided over that company's merger with Gay.com.

[25][26] After leaving the White House in 2017, Smith became CEO and Founder of shift7 which works on tech-forward, inclusive innovation for faster impact on systemic economic, social, and environmental challenges.

[31] Smith has contributed to a broad range of engineering projects, including a bicycle lock,[32] space station construction program, and solar cookstoves.

[34] Her appeal for technologists to work in public service at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing inspired several Harvard University students to create the national non-profit organization Coding it Forward which creates data science and technology internship program for undergraduate and graduate students in United States federal agencies.

Smith married technology columnist Kara Swisher in Marin County in 1999 at a time when same-sex marriage was not legal in California.