Governor Names N.C. A&T’s Smith-Jackson to Performance Management Advisory Committee

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (Feb. 23, 2021) – Gov. Roy Cooper has named North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Tonya Smith-Jackson to the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Performance Management.

Smith-Jackson is one of 13 members of the committee who are responsible for advising the governor regarding the progress of the Pew-MacArthur Results Initiative, which works with states to implement an innovative evidence-based policymaking approach that helps them invest in policies and programs than are proved to work.

Additionally, the committee advises the governor on new performance initiatives, proposed or pending state legislation, rule or policies related to performance management and strategies for increasing evident-based policy efforts.

The committee, established in 2018, consists of at least 10 department heads, senior officials, legislators and performance experts appointed by the governor.

Last year, Cooper appointed Smith-Jackson to the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Board of Science, Technology and Innovation. A&T remains the only historically Black college or university represented on the board.

Smith-Jackson also received the 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Award from the Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM) Society International in recognition and appreciation of her achievements, contributions, dedication and lifelong achievement in the industrial engineering and operations management profession.

In 2018, Smith-Jackson served at the National Science Foundation for a year as program director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate in the Cyber-Human Systems Program before returning to A&T in the role of interim director for the Center of Excellence in Cybersecurity, Research, Education and Outreach.

After working briefly in the private sector, Smith-Jackson joined the faculty of Virginia Tech in 1999. Fourteen years later, she joined A&T as professor and chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, founded the Human Factors Analytics Laboratory and later founded and co-directed the Cyber-Human Analytics Research for the Internet of Things (IoT) Laboratory.

A Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Smith-Jackson serves as chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee of the Institute for Industrial and Systems Engineers. Her research focuses on cyber-human systems, cognitive ergonomics, fairness and inclusion in data science, and mixed data modeling to develop systems that empower caregivers, older people and those with disabilities; provide support for security and privacy; and protect the nation’s cyber infrastructure.

Smith-Jackson earned her B.A. in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.S. in interdisciplinary psychology/ergonomics and industrial engineering and Ph.D. in psychology/ergonomics from North Carolina State University.