It started with a sketch in a third-grade classroom in the Bronx. While other kids played at recess, Dr. Tahira Reid Smith was drawing her invention — a machine that could turn the ropes for Double Dutch so anyone could jump in.

That sketch traveled with her for the next four decades. She earned her degrees in mechanical engineering, studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute under famed inventor Burt Swersey, and built a career as an engineering professor, eleven years at Purdue University before joining Penn State, where she became a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Along the way, her invention and story have been on exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and have been featured on NPR, the New York Times, Essence, the Today Show, and PBS NOVA. She has also demonstrated the prototype on Capitol Hill.

In 2023, she founded Jump Dreams, Inc. to finally bring that third-grade sketch to life. Working with Speck Design, she developed a functional prototype of the world’s first automated Double Dutch training system — built from the culture she grew up in and engineered with the expertise of her entire career.

Forty years from sketch to startup. The dream never stopped.