Census figures show that the Hispanic population is one of the fastest growing in the country – from 10.4 percent in 1995 to 12 percent in 2000. But Hispanics remain seriously underrepresented in engineering. In 1997, when Hispanics were 11.1 percent of the population, less than 4 percent of working engineers were Hispanic, according to figures from the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov).

Change is coming, although it’s slow. Between 1982 and 1997, for example, the number of Hispanics in advanced engineering degree programs more than doubled.

Organizations like the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE, www.shpe.org) and the Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists (MAES, www.maes-natl.org) play a critical role in introducing Hispanic students to the world of engineering. Several of the engineers profiled below say their involvement with SHPE helped them prepare for their first jobs.

The Hispanic engineers interviewed here reflect both ends of the experience spectrum. Marcos Cordero, Juana Morales and Ben Ochoa are in the early stages of their engineering careers. The rest are well along in their work lives, but they’re good examples of how an engineering career can develop.

Marcos Cordero, SHPE senior of the year, now develops computer simulations at GM.

Marcos Cordero of GM: driven to succeed
Marcos Cordero always liked to build things. He grew up San Juan, PR, but finished high school in Miami, FL. During his junior year, he attended a summer program at MIT (Cambridge, MA) called MITE2S (Minority Introduction to Engineering Entrepreneurship and Science, web.mit.edu/mites/www/). “We had robot building competitions like the kind you see on the Discovery Channel,” he says. “After that, I wanted to build things using math, physics and computers.”

And he wanted to go to MIT. Luckily, MIT wanted him, too.

He was drawn to mechanical engineering, he says, because of the hands-on aspect of the field. He interned the summer after sophomore year at CoMatrix (Fort Lauderdale, FL), a telecom equipment company, where he worked in inventory management. He later spent the year as a research assistant at MIT, and studied abroad at the London School of Economics the summer before his senior year. “I thought it would be a tremendous learning experience, and I already had plenty of research experience. It gave me a different cultural perspective on things,” he says. He graduated from MIT in 2001 with his BSME. He was active in SHPE and was even named SHPE Senior of the Year.

When General Motors (Detroit, MI) came to campus to recruit, he scheduled an interview and the company offered him a job in Pontiac, MI. He started as an associate engineer in the variation reduction division. He’s now a project engineer in the variation analysis organization, also in Pontiac, where he develops computer simulations. “Our computer analyzes model variations from design to manufacturing to the assembly of parts. We try to see what the final vehicle will look like and attack potential quality issues early on in the design.”

Cordero enjoys the teamwork his job involves. “I get to work with people from all the different organizations, design to assembly,” he says. “You see how everyone has different priorities and you try to balance those out.”

Cordero is currently working on an MSME at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) with tuition assistance provided by GM. For now, Cordero sees experience as the key to his future success. “You realize what you can and cannot do. You have to manage your expectations early on.”

He recommends meeting with your manager to guarantee that you get the appropriate experience. “Sitting down with your manager ensures you are on the same page. It is easier to find out what they expect early on from you and your job than to find out after the fact.”

Verizon’s Juana Morales manages twenty employees, who support plant engineers.

Verizon’s Juana Morales: from math to engineering
Juana Morales grew up in Union City, NJ, an inner city neighborhood just five minutes from New York City. She admits that she didn’t have the best high school education. What she did have was an interest in mathematics. When a friend attended a summer engineering program, Morales realized that engineering would be a way to combine her creativity and love of math to make an interesting career.

In high school, her math teacher encouraged her to enroll in summer engineering programs at Syracuse University. She learned about electrical engineering, and reinforced her interest in an engineering degree.

She chose Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA) “because it had one of the best co-op education programs in the country,” she says. She interned at Hewlett-Packard in Wilmington, DE and did three co-ops: with PJM Interconnection Association, a utility company in Norristown, PA; Lockheed Martin in Moorestown, NJ; and Lucent Technologies in Whippany, NJ. Co-ops also helped Morales pay for college.

At Drexel, Morales joined SHPE. “SHPE was my training ground for becoming a manager,” she says. “I held every job you could possibly imagine in that organization. I went from being a member to chapter president, regional and then national student representative. I managed budgets and ran workshops.”

As her 1999 graduation approached, Morales used SHPE resources to find her first job. At the 1999 SHPE national conference, she helped set up workshops, including one run by telecom provider Verizon (New York, NY). “I had a good rapport with them, so I asked if they had any openings. They arranged an interview right there at the conference.” She also had offers from several other companies, but she wanted to work in telecom. As an added attraction, Verizon had a rotation program with a management focus.

She finished her BSEE that spring and began working as a network design engineer with the Verizon network design group in Tampa, FL. She was responsible for cable connecting the company’s remote and central offices.

Morales was recently promoted to supervisor in Verizon’s network engineering and planning department in Clearwater, FL. She manages twenty employees including fourteen facility surveyors, eight drafters and one clerk. Her group supports outside plant engineers in the Clearwater and St. Petersburg areas.

Morales says the work can get pretty intense, particularly in bad weather. “We work with the outside plant infrastructure, and cable can get damaged, especially in the rainy season. When you get a lot of service orders, it gets challenging to handle repairs and normal service work at the same time.”

Her new position gives her insight into the business. “I like the interaction between different departments. There are so many key groups you need to work with, and you learn a lot about the company.” She’s now working on her MBA at the University of Tampa. “I think it will complement my engineering background.”

Because an engineering degree has opened doors for her, Morales says that others should consider the field. “Because of its diversity and flexibility, you can do so many things with an engineering degree.”

At BAE Systems, Ben Ochoa researches video exploitation in the area of aerial imagery.

Ben Ochoa of BAE Systems: an early interest in engineering
Ben Ochoa got interested in engineering after reading Robert A. Heinlein’s science-fiction classic, Citizen of the Galaxy, which features a cyborg with a bionic eye. The thought of someone manipulating images and vision fascinated him. Couple this with his interest in how things work and you have a blueprint for an interesting engineering career.

Ochoa, who grew up in Los Angeles, CA, enrolled at the University of California, San Diego in 1993. Ochoa figured his interest in machinery and images would lead to a career in mechanical engineering. “But when I learned more about the various engineering disciplines,” he says, “I found I liked electrical engineering more.”

Ochoa also found a connection to his interest in images. “Once I got into electrical engineering, I saw that the underlying theories could be applied to signal processing, then image processing, and, finally, video processing.”

In 1996, the summer after his junior year, he worked part time with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography as a development engineer in the underwater imaging research group. “It was my first job building imaging systems.” When his supervisor moved out of state, the lab director offered him the full-time job of supervisor. Ochoa accepted and became a part-time student.

He graduated from UC-San Diego in 1999 with a BSEE and an MSEE, and stayed with Scripps until 2000. Then, at a job fair on the UC-San Diego campus, he connected with BAE Systems Mission Solutions (San Diego, CA). He was offered a job as senior engineer in advanced programs in the research and engineering department.

Ochoa now researches video exploitation for people analyzing aerial imagery. It’s cutting-edge work, he says. “People who did image analysis usually got still images, but they are now putting video sensors on platforms in the air.” Both military and commercial customers want the system.

He enjoys the technology as well as the challenges. “Getting video processing algorithms to run in real time on typical PCs can be tough.”

Ochoa’s interest in imaging and technology will keep him “technical” for a while. “I want to stay technical for as long as I can,” he says. “However, I would like to one day be a director and work on larger projects.” He’s working on his PhD in electrical and computer engineering at UC-San Diego with an emphasis on computer vision.

Raul Monreal, General Dynamics, worked as an intern, a co-op and hired on as an engineer.

Raul Monreal of General Dynamics Decision Systems: balancing career and community
In high school, Raul A. Monreal III wanted to be an architect because “I was always good at drawing.” In his senior year, his creativity found another outlet. “I got interested in how computers could help me draw.”

He enrolled at Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) as a computer science/engineering major in 1989. “Engineering allows for creativity,” he says. Soon after he arrived, he attended a meeting of SHPE.

It was the start of a great experience. “Organizations like SHPE prepare you for a career in the corporate world of engineering, math, science and technology,” Monreal declares. Through connections he made at SHPE conferences, Monreal landed his first internship with the secure telecommunications division of Motorola’s Government Electronics Group (Scottsdale, AZ) in the summer of his freshman year. (The group was acquired by General Dynamics in September 2001.)

Monreal worked on software development, schematic verification, and benchmarking projects. “I was never treated as ‘just’ an intern,” he says. “I was given tasks and work scope that pertained to my level of expertise at the time.”

The group liked Monreal’s work ethic and asked him to return as a co-op student. He did, and in the summer of 1993 he began a second internship in the group’s secure telecommunications business. His team worked on integrating and testing hardware and software for a large military program.

Balancing part-time work and school delayed Monreal’s graduation date, but he received real world experience in return – and Motorola provided a scholarship as well. He managed to remain active in campus organizations, make the engineering dean’s list and win several other scholarships and awards. He also served as VP and president of the ASU SHPE chapter.

After graduating in 1995 with a BS in computer science and engineering, Monreal stayed with Motorola as the lead software engineer on several military projects. He traveled to Korea, Germany, and Bosnia to work directly with the company’s military customers. “My field experience with the U.S. military taught me how critical it is that the software and systems we manufacture actually do what they are designed to do for the soldier.”

Back in the U.S., Monreal became a staff software task leader on the Tactical Airspace Integration System (TAIS) project. This system allows Army commanders to visualize airspace in two and three dimensions. “It helps the commander manage the battlefield airspace. Before, commanders only had a bird’s eye view. Now, they can view the whole air picture.”

The TAIS program began five years ago as a prototype project. Monreal progressed from software task lead, to project lead, and eventually to project manager. The program was an extremely successful part of Motorola’s business. “The program is accepted and used by the U.S. Army right now in real world situations.” For his work, Monreal received the Motorola Commercial Government Integrated Solutions Sector 2000 worldwide recognition award, which goes to the top one percent of the company’s engineers.

In addition to his professional achievements, Monreal is actively involved in the community. In 1994, he co-produced “The Original Latino Comedy Night,” the only Latino-themed comedy event in Arizona. A percentage of the proceeds go to the scholarship funds of Latino-focused nonprofits like SHPE. Latino Comedy Night is now a biennial event at a Tempe, AZ nightclub.

Monreal is also active in other local Latino organizations, nearly all involved in promoting education. “I tell the community about the achievements of Latinos in math, science and technology,” he says. “I want to encourage Latino students to consider careers in those areas.”

Dell’s Roy Guillen learned hardware design while doing a co-op.

Roy Guillen of Dell: a passion for engineering
Roy Guillen’s parents encouraged him to take risks. “They wanted me to find things in life that I could develop a passion for,” Guillen says.

Born in Southern California, Guillen moved to Costa Rica with his family when he was ten. He and his family returned to the U.S. when he was fifteen and settled in Huntington Beach, CA.

In high school, he enjoyed physics and enrolled as a physics major at the University of California at Irvine. “In the summer of my freshman year, I decided to try an engineering course. I was two weeks into the class when I realized that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he says. He graduated with a BS in electrical and computer engineering.

Relationships and internships played a key part in Guillen’s early successes. During his sophomore year, he met Scott Sims, an engineering manager at ICL, a British company with offices in the U.S. “They wanted someone to do an internship and then a co-op with them,” he says. “During the interview, I told Scott why I liked engineering and how excited I was about the position. I completed the internship and did co-ops for the rest of my college career.”

The co-ops gave him experience in hardware design. Although some of the work was tedious, “The engineers assured me that what I was working on was really important and would make me a really good design engineer.”

Guillen graduated in 1991. Despite several job offers, he elected to stay with ICL where he and a senior engineer co-designed a brand new server. “Ken White became the greatest technical mentor I had,” Guillen says. “He was officially the lead engineer, but he let me run with stuff. He also let me fall on my face when I needed it.”

When ICL closed its U.S. offices in 1994-1995, he followed his ICL mentor to AST Computers. At AST, Guillen started as a lead engineer. Within a year, he was managing an engineering team.

It was a tough transition. “As an engineer or even a lead engineer, you’re always in control of what you do. You have very specific areas of responsibility. As a manager, that paradigm changes,” Guillen says.

AST downsized several times between the mid to late 1990s. Guillen left in January 1998, and joined Dell (Round Rock, TX) as a senior engineering manager of a new organization, Storage Systems. “It was a great chance to learn things from scratch. It was like running a business within a business.”

In January 2001, Guillen was promoted to director of engineering for PowerVault external storage for Dell’s enterprise systems group. His responsibilities include developing Dell’s network attached storage and external enclosure product lines. He also handles the mechanical design of the entire PowerVault product line. As director, he mentors and develops other engineering managers.

Engineering students should be willing to take risks to find their passion, he advises. “Find out what engineering field piques your interest and makes it feel like fun. Once you find that, much of your career will take care of itself.”

Seagate’s Robbie Mondragon enjoys the challenge of getting new technology to work.

Robbie Mondragon of Seagate: the disk drive niche
As a kid, Robbie Mondragon liked to tear the TV apart. “I would take the tubes over to the Safeway Supermarket, test them out, and see how they worked,” he says. “But I didn’t always get them back the right way.”

His interest in finding out what worked and what didn’t carried him right into college. He graduated from the Phoenix Institute of Technology (Phoenix, AZ) in 1988 with an associate’s degree in electronics and applied sciences.

His first job after college was in failure analysis with disk drive maker MiniScribe (Longmont, CO). For the next few years, his frequent job changes mirrored the volatility of the storage industry. In 1990, he moved to Prairie Tech (Longmont, CO) to a similar position that involved travel to Asia. “I found I enjoyed Far East travel,” he says. Two years later, Mondragon joined Integral (Longmont, CO), another disk drive company. “I’ve worked at all the disk drive companies in Colorado at one time or another,” he says with a smile.

After a year with Integral, he joined Seagate in 1992, still in a failure analysis role. In 1994, he moved to the process group where he wrote process software for the test floor.

The change was interesting for Mondragon. “With the failure analysis side, I was doing a lot of programming. Working through the process of things was the next logical step.”

Mondragon has also worked in R&D. “I’ve run three different programs in the development group,” he says. Now he’s a development senior engineer in a group that focuses on read-channel work and subsystems.

“In each group, I did a lot of overseas traveling,” Mondragon says. Aside from the travel, he likes working directly with the programs. “I enjoy being in on the front end. With disk drives you are always on the leading edge of technology. Just getting the new technology to work correctly is a big challenge.”

Mondragon is active in Seagate’s Colorado Diversity Action Council, which provides education and activities that emphasize diversity. He hopes to finish his BSEE soon.

Randy Meza’s co-op at Aerojet turned into a job supporting Titan rockets.

Randy Meza of Aerojet: flying high with rockets
Randy Meza is team leader for the Titan II and IV rocket programs at Aerojet (Sacramento, CA), a government aerospace contractor. Meza’s team of twenty-five engineers supports all Titan activities, including launching government payloads and satellites into space.

The team handles the booster’s liquid rocket engine. Their activities range from designing to testing to fabricating hardware. They also support preparations for launch.

Meza grew up in Ogden, UT and attended San Joaquin Delta College (Stockton, CA) from 1980-1982, with the intention of pursuing a career in drafting. But he found he was more interested in designing, so he transferred to California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo and graduated in 1985 with a BSME.

During his senior year, he did a co-op at Aerojet, working in the manufacturing planning area for test and assembly on the Titan rocket program. “Things kind of fell into place for me,” says Meza. “I was their first co-op in ten years.”

After he finished his degree, he returned as a manufacturing engineer and stayed in the position for seven years. In 1992, he moved to the launch support group, and by 1998 he was managing the group.

His job revolves around communication. “Communicating your thoughts and ideas effectively is vital. You have to be able to do that not only within the group but with customers.” Working together as a team is exciting, especially preparing launches. “A lot of importance is attached to some of the payloads dealing with national defense. You take pride in feeling you are playing a critical role.”

Roger Pineiro, AMD: “We forge new paths all the time.”

Roger Pineiro of AMD: a delicate balance
Roger Pineiro never participated in a co-op as a Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, LA) student. So when he started with semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Sunnyvale, CA) in 1983, his career goals were unclear. Twenty years later, Pineiro says he has been very lucky.

Engineering runs in the Pineiro family. His father, a self-employed electrical engineer, works on control systems for sugar factories. “He follows the sugar cane,” says Pineiro. That’s why his family has lived in Cuba, where Pineiro was born, as well as El Salvador and Louisiana.

Pineiro’s twin sisters are also EEs. “I think I always knew I would do something technical,” he says. “I guess it’s in our blood.”

Pineiro came to the U.S. with his family in 1977. He attended high school in Melbourne, FL just south of Cape Canaveral. He enrolled in LSU with thoughts of becoming an aeronautical engineer, but things changed in his sophomore year. “I took my first computer class as an elective and just fell in love with computers.” He graduated in 1983 with a BS in computer engineering.

He came to AMD purely by accident. “I already had interviews with Motorola and IBM, and a lot of interest from them and several other companies. I was planning on blowing off the AMD interview, which was my last one. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, encouraged me to at least go for the interview,” says Pineiro.

Pineiro’s future boss, Jerry Vogel, conducted the interview. The two hit it off, and he was hired to work with the microprocessor team in AMD’s facility in Austin, TX. Vogel led the team as senior engineer with Pineiro as his junior.

“That was right at the beginning of the IBM personal computer in the early 1980s,” says Pineiro. “Apple was still big, and IBM was just getting into the game.” In 1986, IBM chose AMD’s 2900 microprocessor as a second source for 8086 and 8088 mPs. Pineiro worked on the 80XX processors and several others. His responsibilities expanded and promotions followed.

When Vogel was tapped to work on the new AMD K-5 microprocessor in 1993, he asked Pineiro to lead the development and testing group. They spent the next three years bringing AMD’s first independently designed microprocessor to market.

Pineiro was later promoted to work on the AMD K-6, which led to his current position as director of product development engineering for AMD’s computation products division.

His current projects are the AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron processors. Pineiro is responsible for all post-design activities related to the processors, including testing processors in wafer or package form. In addition, his team does reliability testing, debugging and manufacturing support. He works closely with AMD’s manufacturing facilities in Germany, Malaysia and Singapore.

One thing Pineiro likes about working with microprocessors is the people. “We are adrenaline junkies. We like the excitement and the challenge of figuring out how to do something,” he says. He enjoys the fact that AMD continually defines new rules and breaks old ones. “We forge new paths all the time. There is no textbook telling us how to do things.”

Pineiro attributes his success to his ability to maintain a certain balance. “When I’m at work, I give 150 percent. But when I’m home, I find a way to turn it off.”

His life outside of AMD is just as exciting. He earned a second-degree karate black belt in 1994. He also writes novels that draw on his high-tech experiences. His eleventh novel was published in February.

Although he didn’t have the opportunity himself, Pineiro encourages students to search out a co-op or internship. “I got lucky. I was on the right team and found the right technology niche. It could have easily gone another way.”

Angel Cunalata of IR: getting a good start
Role models teach valuable lessons. Angel Cunalata considers himself lucky that friends from his old Chicago neighborhood went to college and encouraged him to go, too.

Always a lover of math, Cunalata enrolled at the Chicago campus of DeVry University in an electronics engineering technology program. He proved to be a quick learner and became a teaching assistant during his last eighteen months at DeVry. He graduated in 1983 with a BSEET.

He took a post-graduation trip to Southern California, and found that the climate suited him. Several friends already worked at a local Xerox facility. “I really hoped to work there,” he says. “But they had no openings.” Instead, he was hired into the reliability department of nearby International Rectifier (IR, El Segundo, CA). Many of IR’s products are installed in consumer appliances, automobiles, computers, communication devices, lighting systems and military equipment.

Cunalata was immediately put in charge of lab test equipment. “Three technicians knew more about the job than I did,” he says. His first three years were challenging, but he learned a lot about the company’s business.

He moved into R&D in 1986. His new group conducted final tests on new products. Cunalata wrote development programs and built prototypes. “We built a lot of in-house automated test equipment systems. When we couldn’t find testers to do the tests, we did many of the test programs ourselves.”

Cunalata moved to IR’s wafer fab facility in Temecula, CA in 1996. The plant manufactures metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs), switch products and insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). Cunalata is currently a product engineer in the quality department, working closely with IR’s assembly plant in Tijuana, Mexico.

One challenge of Cunalata’s job is controlling the number of customer returns. “In economic downturns, customers demand higher quality. Our challenge is not to lose a customer while giving them a program for corrective action. We want to show them that we are taking care of the issues they identify.”

Another challenge for Cunalata is spending more time with his family. “For a lot of companies in the semiconductor industry, twelve-hour days are the norm. That’s a lot of time away from the family.”

Experienced engineers like Cunalata, Monreal, Guillen, Mondragon, Meza and Pineiro are committed to sharing their passion for engineering. Through organizations like SHPE and MAES, they can help promising students and graduates like Cordero, Morales and Ochoa just starting careers in engineering. Through such relationships, perhaps the ranks of Hispanic engineers will grow even faster.

D/C

– Skip Waugh is a freelance writer living in Boulder, CO.