Lawyer Empowering Women to Higher Levels
As corporate counsel for Campbell Soup Company, Tara L. Smith provides legal guidance to the company’s senior executives and board of directors.
She routinely works on issues relating to corporate governance, securities law, executive compensation, compliance, and enterprise risk. Smith’s colleagues say her talents stretch beyond the legal sector. They describe her as an advocate for empowering women to reach their highest potential and say she has a passion for youth education. Her leadership in the community fully demonstrates her commitment to those ideals.
At the office, Smith serves as the global co-chair/business advisor for the Women of Campbell (WoC) Business Resource Affinity Network, with a mission of enabling women at the company reach their full potential. She says the most important quality a woman leader should have is patience. “Have patience not just with others, but also with yourself,” she explains.
She lives by the Maya Angelou quote: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” In advice to women looking to rise in the ranks, she says
“Forgive your own shortcomings, and don’t expect to be perfect at everything all the time.”
Smith sits on the board of trustees of the Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School, the advisory committee for the Women of the Dream mentoring program, and is active with the Philadelphia chapter of the Duke Black Alumni Association. She was also a 2016 participant in the United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey’s Young Leaders program.
She has served on the Board of Directors of the Delaware Valley chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, the Board of Directors of the AIDS Law Project, and the planning committee for Toll Brothers’ annual fundraising gala for the American Cancer Society.
Smith launched her career as a business and finance associate in the Philadelphia office of Morgan Lewis and went on as assistant vice president in the legal department at Toll Brothers, Inc., a publicly-traded luxury home builder in Pennsylvania.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and political science from Duke University and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
