Ms. Teresa L. Smetzer is currently an independent consultant supporting initiatives aimed at  national security mission innovation.  For 30 plus years, Ms. Smetzer has been a trailblazer in enabling the evolution of national security missions.  She has led numerous noteworthy initiatives that have served as hallmarks of  intelligence agencies’ programs.  During her tenure at the CIA while serving as the Director of Digital Futures in the Directorate of Digital Innovation, she stood up an intelligence outpost for critical partnerships with the private sector to incubate experiments and prototypes to mission hard problems. As a result, the CIA was able to apply technologies to problem sets in a novel and expeditious manner.  Most recently, she  served as Salesforce’s Vice President, National Security Programs as a business development executive.

In 2016, Ms. Smetzer returned to CIA to direct Digital Futures after spending 14 years in the private sector as a CEO, business strategist, and investor. In this capacity, she leveraged her expertise from both the public and private sectors to accelerate the identification and adoption of industry leading digital technologies with the goal of modernizing, advancing, and transforming mission.  Among the efforts that she supported was one that transformed the analytic community – creating programs that help analysts do their jobs more effectively, cultivating collaboration among analysts by creating mechanisms where they can share in a raw, open, and safe environment.  She was awarded both CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal and Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal for her CIA service.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Smetzer served 17 years at CIA as a technical analyst and senior manager, participating in and leading multiple transformation-related task forces and programs aimed at modernizing the business of intelligence, including the development of the first Directorate of Intelligence strategic plan.  She conceptualized and led an innovative initiative aimed at aligning fragmented intelligence production processes into a secure, web-based, collaborative, real-time production environment. 

In 2004, Ms. Smetzer served on the White House Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Ms. Smetzer established her own strategic management consulting company, Jasmah Consulting.  After her company was acquired in 2008, Ms. Smetzer held senior executive positions in business development and operations in large and small businesses, served on multiple Boards of Directors, and invested in and mentored multiple emergent technology companies.

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