Today we’d like to introduce you to Gina Smith.
Hi Gina, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
At a very young age, I have always wanted to have my own business. I grew up on a farm where I worked in my family’s vegetable market during the summer. I remember my first business “Gina’s Mini Mart”. My parents would give me vegetables that I would sell on a picnic table outside their market.
I was educated in remedial math and reading classes, which I feel was the source of my growing pains with school, education, and believing college was not an option. However, I discovered after barely and I mean barely graduating from high school I was pregnant. As a teenage unwed mother my focus was on ensuring that I could provide the lifestyle for my daughter that I was accustomed to. Starting a business was not on my radar, especially, since I had no idea where my talent was or the type of service or product I could provide. I felt a college degree was now necessary.
Fast forward many years, I earned an Associate in Applied Science in Electronic Engineering Technology (Wake Technical Community College), a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering Magna Cum Laude (North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University), and a Master of Science in Systems Engineering (Johns Hopkins University with honors because of my 4.0 GPA). After working for about 10 years designing military systems and earning my master’s degree, I was ready to leave my job as a very successful engineer. I had received a few professional honors and awards, was receiving stock options, very high yearly performance evaluation ratings, and raises from 6% – 18% when the standard was 2% – 3%. These things definitely helped me feel confident in starting my own business using my engineering skills, knowledge, and talent.
I started a research and development company to develop a biometric credit card I designed and submitted for a patent. To fund my company, I started contracting but after not receiving the patent I decided to just focus on contracting. I had always wanted to be published, so I wrote “The art of FPGA construction”. This was an article published in Embedded Systems Design magazine. This checked the box for being published. Little did I know, a book publisher saw my article and asked if I was interested in writing a book. I gladly accepted the offer. My first book FPGAs 101 was published. Since then, I have written several self-published eBooks, developed engineering courses for colleges, and universities. I had an LLC to hold my real estate investment properties and took private pilot flying lessons so, I could fly under visual flight rules (VFR).
Fast forward again after years of contracting, about seven months ago interest in drones returned with a stronger passion. I decided to be a drone pilot. On July 11, 2025, I passed the Part 107 test, which earned me a Remote Drone Pilot license or certificate. I am officially a Drone Pilot. This started Gina’s Drone Services, where I currently offer pre-mission preparation and post-mission processing. My services in 2026 will include flying drones.
I use all of my engineering education, skills, experience, and knowledge in providing my services. Many pilots just want to fly and not worry about the logistics or even have a technical background. For many years I worked on mission critical systems used by our warfighters helping to ensure the systems worked. It is my passion that my work produces systems that keep the people who work to keep us safe keep them safe as well. This is the same passion and expertise helping drone pilots to fly safely and in compliance. In addition to keeping up the FAA rules for compliance, I use engineering to read and understand relevant drone information and apply that to the current mission, so the pilots can make good go/no go decisions.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No not a smooth road.
Some of my main struggles are getting clients, and networking. It is often difficult finding clients who realize, appreciate and are willing to invest in preventive measures or even realize they are missing some of the necessities for legal commercial drone flying. Some pilots are flying commercially but they do not have certain requirements such as the Part 107 certificate or waivers that is required to fly in a restricted airspace. Drones can be flown without these things but not legally. Penalties and fees can be very costly and could even include jail time.
I am a stereotypical engineer in that networking is very difficult. It is something I work really hard to overcome. The struggle is overcoming potential client’s willingness to try new vendors even though they are dissatisfied with the current ones.
Through my struggles, I have learned how to choose my battles.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
What I do:
I help companies design, manage and maintain mission critical military applications mainly RADAR systems. I apply good systems and electrical engineering practices to whatever system or technology for which I am working.
Some of the systems are primary and secondary surveillance RADAR, Information Friend or Foe (IFF), Chem-bio protection systems, and systems that involved cryptographic technology. Much of the work I do is classified.
I consultant as a subject matter expert in different engineering areas. Because I have designed circuits from 100,000 volts down to 3.3 volts and have written firmware, VHDL, for Field Programmable Gate Arrays or FPGAs that was used in IFF or a Fuze. Yes, the “z” is the correct spelling for a missile.
I write and create engineering courses. When available, I work as an adjunct instructor for different colleges and/or universities. I have created and taught electrical and systems engineering courses on subjects such as FPGAs and systems engineering.
Specialize in and known for:
I am known for my ability to use what I call my good foundational skills on various types of systems and technologies. These skills allow me to identify problems, provide innovative solutions, organize, and simplify complex things in helping people understand and/or reach conclusions. Based on the feedback I have received and many opportunities which resulted in these things are the reasons I feel my area of specialty and I am known. Guess this fit in with my systems engineering mindset. Because as a systems engineer, I work across many different engineering disciplines, so it is important that I have a wide range of skills, knowledge, and experience in order to add value. All of which I have designed in obtaining what is needed to support my career.
In my personal life I am most proud of being a mother to my daughter. She was and is my motivation for everything I do including starting the “James W. Smith Memorial Scholarship” at Wake Technical Community college. Just my small way of helping others at the college that helped me build a solid foundation for getting my 4-year degree in Electrical Engineering and later my MS in systems engineering. For my professional life, I am most proud of solving a problem in 7 days when over two years and several engineers were not able to solve. By doing this it saved the company several thousands of dollars each month. Needless to say, they were very happy with my work and made me a little proud of myself too.
Sets me apart from others:
I believe it is my willingness to do a good job regardless of the tasks, self-motivated to learn new things, love and passionate about engineering, very good at using my tools to produce high-quality documents and a quick learner. A lead engineer once stated it was like I knew everything. In a good way. Because I had only been on the contract for a couple of months and was already contributing, correcting, and helping with their needs. In fact, when audited by their customer, I was told the customer keep going on and on about the work products I had created and my organization system. We got no action items after reviewing over 1700 requirement reports. The companies were very pleased with my work. So, when they were laying off contractors I was still in place. A sign to me that I was set apart enough to be kept.
Another manager once commented to me that I have very high standards I try to live by and always do with I say I am going to do or otherwise explain why I couldn’t. He said I was very good at taking accountability for any mistakes for which I may have made. I was often the go to person for solutions, many different and complex tasks. This explains why I was often rewarded with high performance evaluations, raises and opportunities not offered to others at my career level. This was an indicator to me that I was set apart from the others.
A comment I get often is I am honest to a fault. What I say is it is better to tell the truth and earn a job the honest way. My dad taught us that your name will go further than you will ever go and that a persons’ word is their bond and that a good name is very important. So, we must always protect our name. Words I try to live by. I believe people that know me would agree that is true about me.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I offer a free consultation to discuss their needs and how I can help them. My contact information is:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 984.212.2218
Schedule an appointment at: https://calendly.com/grsmith120/
Website: https://grsmith120.wixsite.com/grsmithconsulting
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ginasdroneservices
I use virtual tools like Google Chat or if local I am willing to do a face-to-face meeting.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://grsmith120.wixsite.com/grsmithconsulting
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ginasdroneservices/?viewAsMember=true
- Other: https://calendly.com/grsmith120/
