How the real Olivia Pope would have handled the CrowdStrike outage

Crisis manager Judy Smith, the inspiration for the TV show ‘Scandal,’ unpacks what the company got right and where it dropped the ball.

Judy Smith is a crisis manager whose career was the inspiration for the TV show Scandal—specifically its lead character, Olivia Pope, played by Kerry Washington. For more than 25 years, Smith has advised world leaders and Fortune 500 CEOs. In 1993, she founded Smith & Co., a crisis management firm with offices in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, and London. She was involved in the Iran-Contra investigation, advised Monica Lewinsky when the former White House intern’s relationship with President Bill Clinton became public, and served as an adviser during the COVID-19 outbreak.