Minnesota Senator Tina Smith is the junior senator from Minnesota and is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Party, and has recently joined the Senate RV Caucus.
A New Mexico native, she attended Stanford University and went on to earn her MBA from Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. In 1984, Tina moved to Minnesota to work in marketing for General Mills, where she worked until leaving to start her own small marketing business.
Before being elected to serve as Minnesota’s 48th lieutenant governor in 2015, she served as chief of staff to both Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. She spent much of her time traveling the state and supporting the Dayton administration’s priorities, such as transportation infrastructure and rural broadband internet access. She achieved such success in the role that Roll Call named her one of “America’s Top 25 Most Influential Women in State Politics” in 2016.
