‘Sometimes you have to struggle’

From Oak Ridger.com: ‘Sometimes you have to struggle’
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. —

Forensic scientist Jenifer Smith told several stories about her career path and where that path has led, but her story point was clear -- support the dreams of young girls in their own paths.

Smith spoke recently at the Girls Incorporated annual Committee of 100 luncheon at the DoubleTree Hotel, and later visited Girls Inc., where she shared stories of her own career opportunities and did some DNA sampling.

The Committee of 100 is a select group of women who each contribute $100 or more to help address the growth and development of girls through programs at Girls Inc.

Smith is currently a professor of forensic science at Pennsylvania State University. However, that’s a position she has held for only a year.

Her earlier work was with the FBI, where she managed intelligence analysts gathering information on weapons of mass destruction threats and served as a forensic DNA examiner in the FBI laboratory.

During her 23-year career with the FBI, Smith was involved in several famous cases including the Unabomber and the Oklahoma City bombing and the analysis of President Bill Clinton’s DNA in the Monica Lewinski investigation.

Her career choices didn’t always please her parents and friends, she told the group.

“I wanted to be ‘Nancy Drew,’” Smith said about her childhood dream. Later, she said she wanted to be “like ‘Quincy’,” the TV medical examiner of the 1970s.

But, in the 1970s, she said, “No girls were doing it.”

As an 18-year-old girl, Smith said, wanting to be a forensic scientist was thought of as “a little weird” and working with dead people was “sick.”

But, Smith went on to Penn State and earned a degree in biochemistry in 1981. This came after some struggles with her parents about her choice of career, and after some struggles with science-related classes.

She said she got a “C” in one of her classes, a first for her, but learned it was OK.

“Science can be difficult,” she said. “You have to tell girls a “C” is not a bad grade.”

During those early years, she had an opportunity to work in a New York City medical examiners’ office, something her parents were a bit nervous about.

“Mom said, ‘no,’” Smith said. “I had a melt down, a tantrum. I told my mom that I had to go. There are more murders in New York City than anywhere else.

“That was not a good argument,” she said recalling her mother’s reaction. But, after her parents were invited for a visit, her mother became a fan and she was allowed to spend her summers in New York City.

“I was like in death heaven,” she said. She knew then where her path was going.

She went on to earn her doctorate in physiological chemistry from Ohio State University, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard School of Medicine’s Department of Immunology and Transplantation in Boston before joining the FBI.

All of that process, she said, took years of study and research -- and more study.

“Sometimes you have to struggle,” Smith said. “That’s what you have to tell girls.”

She said she couldn’t get a job in forensics after earning her doctorate because she had no experience, joking that “I never looked at a piece of dirty underwear in my life.”

Again, she had to make a career decision -- become an FBI agent.

“I called my poor mother,” she said, relating her mother’s sentiments. “’You’re going to join the FBI? As an agent? Carry a gun?’”

When a slot came open to join, some people told her she wouldn’t be happy, while some encouraged her.

“You need to have someone to remind you of your dream,” Smith said.

She said she was “scared to death” when she went to the FBI academy at Quantico, but graduated with her class 16 weeks later. She was then assigned to the Boston Field Office, only the third woman agent in the office’s history.

The rest of her story is also history.

Smith’s DNA work put her in the middle of infamous cases. The most famous was that of Clinton’s DNA and Lewinski’s “blue dress.”

She said her office found DNA on the 10th blue dress examined.

“She (Lewinski) had a lot of blue dresses,” she said. When the lab found semen stains, she said a “young tech” came to her and said, “I got results and it’s positive.”

The next day, Smith said, “I had to get a blood sample from the President.”

Smith said President Clinton consented to the test, but “no one at the White House was welcoming us. I’m like, oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening.”

Once she got the sample, she took it back to the lab and told a technician, “whatever you do, don’t drop this,” stating she knew that would be the only sample.

After her work with the FBI, and her joint duty assignment with the Central Intelligence Agency, Smith retired in 2009. She and her husband started their own company but then were both hired by Penn State.