Dr. Athena Smith was born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece where she lived until she was seventeen. For her tertiary education she moved to England, and later the US. Upon completing her graduate studies from SUNY at Buffalo, she and her husband returned to live in Europe, first in Brussels, Belgium and then Athens, Greece. She taught for the University of Maryland extension programs in both countries while later she co-founded and ran the research company KYROS that dealt with European Union-funded research projects on communications and distance learning.  Currently she is a full time tenured professor at Hillsborough Community College and an adjunct at St. Petersburg College. She has presented a number of papers in various conferences in the US and overseas and has published in American and international peer-reviewed journals. She is currently the editor-in-chief of the African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (http://www.ajhtl.com/). She has also created the course "Introduction to Globalization" taught at HCC. She is fluent in English, Greek, French and Spanish. She is married and has three children. 



Her publications include:

1.“Attitudes on the causes of poverty in the US and Europe.” Published in Sociology and Social Work Community on 2/22/2008.

2.“The Social Responsibility of Pharmaceutical Companies” published in Social Sciences, General Community on 11/19/2008.

3."The role of deviant subcultures and crowd psychology in the escalation of riots" published in the National Social Science Journal , 2010, Vol. 35: Issue 1.

4."The Mediterranean Union: Socioeconomic Benefits and Challenges for Greece" published in Globalization 2009, Volume 8: Issue 1.

5.“Involving Students in Research” in INSIDE@HCC (Spring 2011).

6."Obstacles to the growth of alternative tourism in Greece." Published in the African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Vol. 1 (3) - (2011)

7." Secondary education in the US, Finland and China." Published in the SPC Social and Behavioral Sciences Newsletter, June 2011

8. Medical tourism and organ trafficking. African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Vol. 2 (1) - (2012).

9. The problem of Medical tourism and Organ Trafficking. Medical technology SA, Vol 22 (6), Dec 2012

10. The role of educational tourism in raising academic standards : African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Vol 2(3), 2013 June

11.  Correlates of sex trafficking in three Balkan countries.  African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Vol 3(1), 2014.