Before moving from Manilla to to the United States, Smile Indias served five years as a senior graphic designer and than as the creative director for the former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino lll as part of his Strategic Communications Office. During that period, Indias worked on developing print and web materials that translate complicated government documents into digestible pieces of information for the consumption of the general public. She has also worked on key transparency and accountability initiatives of the administration, namely the open government data portal of the country (www.data.gov.ph) and the Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines (www.gov.ph). Additionally, she was adjunct faculty at Ateneo de Manila University for six years.

In 2016, Indias decided to attend MICA's M.A. in Social Design program.

"I learned to take the leap and trust that I would land on my feet: and I made the bravest decision to uproot my life and attend school here," she said shortly before graduating from MICA. "I am lucky that MICA has a very supportive community that has helped me deal with the challenges I faced once I arrived here. I was expecting a lot of good things from MICA, but I did not expect so much kindness from people that I have only met this year."

She added, "I enjoy the Social Design program for its structure adn level of difficulty, but more so because of the strong commmunity we have in the studio. I love how genuine and effortless the camraderie has been. Everyone in the program treats each other like family, and this is something I value most being so far away from home."

Indias was recently a T. Rowe Price Foundation Fellow, an associate at the Center for Social Design at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a social design advisor to the Baltimore Police Department, where she worked towards an inclusive implementation of the City of Baltimore Consent Decree. She recently returned to Manilla to pursue social design endeavors in her home country.