Lauren Smith is passionate about curbing cybercrime, a field that is constantly changing as criminals find new ways to take advantage of emerging technologies.
That passion led her to pivot from a pre-veterinary college track to one in criminology and, most recently, USF’s fully online Master of Science in Cybercrime program. She says the combination of expert faculty, flexible learning, and industry-relevant content has sparked an exciting career — she is a training manager whose work focuses on cryptocurrency crime.
DISCOVERING HER PATH
While finishing her bachelor’s degree, she completed several internships, including one as a crime scene analyst at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. This expanded her perspective of the field. It also helped her realize that she wanted to dive into the tech side of things. That’s when she landed a role as an anti-money laundering analyst at Citibank, a multinational banking and financial services giant.
“I’m good with Excel and numbers, so I started applying to