Gena attended schools in Coral Gables until high school when she left to attend Holton Arms School for Girls in Washington, DC. She attended the University of Georgia, graduating in 1968 with a BS degree in Education. While at UGA she was a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority and held various offices in the sorority and was on the Pan Hellenic Council.

After graduation Gena returned to Coral Gables and taught junior high school for a year. She was a member of the Junior League of Miami as well as other clubs in the area.

Greatly influenced by her father who was a senior pilot for Eastern Airlines, Gena in 1970 started her career with Delta Airlines in Atlanta as a stewardess and remained with the airline for thirty-three years working in areas of printing, reservations and marketing. She was first on the team to develop a computer system for travel agents and corporations to book reservations. The program is used today and called ‘Travel Port”. At the time of her retirement from Delta Gena was an account executive managing a 167 million dollar account.

While working in Germany for six months in 1985 Gena was at the Frankfort airport when it was bombed. She and several of her colleagues had just walked away from where the bomb was hidden when it exploded. Luckily she and her colleagues were not injured but many were not.

Gena married her college sweetheart, Robert Smith, in 1999.