Dr. Tahira Reid Smith is a Smithsonian-featured inventor, Full Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University, and founder of Jump Dreams, Inc. Born in the Bronx to Jamaican immigrant parents, she sketched her first invention — an automated Double Dutch jump rope machine — in third grade at PS 97 in 1986. Thirty-eight years later, the photo from the day her prototype first worked is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s “Change Your Game” exhibit, and she is bringing that childhood dream to market through Jump Dreams, Inc.

Her work has been featured by the New York Times, Essence Magazine, NBC’s Today Show with Katie Couric and Al Roker, the BBC, NPR, Ebony, PBS NOVA’s “Building Stuff” series, and the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. She has appeared at the Congressional Inventions Project’s Women’s History Month Innovation Showcase on Capitol Hill, given a TEDx talk on noticing innovation, and has been a sought-after voice on representation in STEM for more than two decades.

Dr. Reid Smith holds a Ph.D. in Design Science from the University of Michigan, B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers — a distinction held by only a small fraction of ASME members. She is the author of an upcoming children’s book, *Tahira and the Double Dutch Dream: The Story of Jump Dreams*. Her speaking blends academic rigor, lived authenticity, and a faith-rooted perspective on what it means to walk a long road toward a dream. Audiences leave her talks not just inspired but equipped with a different way of seeing their own work, their own waiting seasons, and their own potential for impact.