Schmidt is an award-winning solutions journalism reporter at the Arizona Daily Star and a 2014 graduate of the University of Arizona School of Journalism. In 2019, she produced a six-story, five-podcast project about efforts to stosexual misconduct at universities, thanks to a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. Since then, she's written solutions-based stories about peer-to-peer reproductive health education at a local clinic and several Pima County programs that aim to get people out of jail and back on track with their lives. Schmidt also was a public safety and sports investigative reporter for the Star.