Enrique Rodriguez, sales VP for IBM’s Lotus software group: “We’re opening doors for the Hispanic community.”

Bringing in Hispanic techies is just good business, says Enrique Rodriguez, VP of sales for IBM’s Lotus software group. “Some 12.5 percent of the U.S. population is Hispanic, and our diverse background and bilingual skills are positive traits for business. We look at things from multiple points of view and find innovative solutions.”

Clearly, he concludes, young Hispanic techies can provide companies with tangible financial gains. Rodriguez, like many other company leaders, encourages Hispanic students to close the digital divide by training for and seeking technical jobs, software among them. In fact, all the companies that Diversity/Careers spoke to are enthusiastic about bringing in Hispanic software grads with all the latest skills.

Becky Vigil, CS major at Colorado School of Mines: “I know I have the training.”

Becky Vigil: catching up
Becky Vigil, a senior in CS at Colorado School of Mines (Golden, CO), knows just how tough it can be to overcome the vastness of the digital divide. The computer revolution never got far at the inner-city Denver high school that Vigil attended. When she got to college, she felt at first that she was far behind her peers.

As a successful CS major Vigil is right up there with everybody else now, but, “Although I know I have the training, it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m playing catch-up to my classmates and the head start they got in high school. Underneath I still sometimes feel that I may not be qualified for the positions I’m interested in,” she says.

But Vigil’s friends in the school’s SHPE chapter reassure her. They tell her that many companies are happy to train clever interns and new hires, and they advise her that the CS track she’s chosen will certainly prepare her for the job market. In fact, her SHPE friends are so high on Vigil that they’ve elected her president of the chapter. “My involvement in SHPE is incredibly helpful,” she says.

So – most of the time – Vigil is optimistic about the future. As her senior year progresses she’s energetically researching companies, signing up for career fairs and other recruiting events, and working to land the software job of her dreams.

Leeha Herrera is software ground control lead in JHU APL’s space department. “The focus is always on academics, not ethnic background,” she says.

Leeha Herrera: telemetry data analysis at APL
“Ethnicity doesn’t come into play at APL,” says Leeha Herrera, a software engineer at the Applied Physics Lab (APL) of Johns Hopkins University (JHU, Baltimore, MD). “The environment is incredibly open. That’s one of the best things about working for a nonprofit, especially in a university setting. The focus is always on academics, not ethnic background.”

APL is Johns Hopkins’ nonprofit R&D division. It began during World War II as a university/government cooperative research organization. Today’s research covers areas like missile, radar, sonar, undersea and sensor technologies, space science, engineering, communications and more.

Herrera is working for the space department as software ground control product lead. “Most of what I do is telemetry data analysis,” she says. “The products I work on interpret data sent down by the spacecraft so mission ops people can determine the health of the spacecraft.”

She and her team do most of their work in C and C++ on Unix workstations. They use Visual Basic and Perl scripts to tie executables together.

Herrera’s father, who is “Mexican with a bit of Native American,” is a doctor with the U.S. Air Force. “I grew up all over,” she says. She was living in Boise, ID, and was in her junior year of high school when she took her first computer course. “It was a basic programming class and I just took to it naturally,” she says. It came to her so quickly that the next semester her teacher let her design her own curriculum.

The teacher also told her about an internship opportunity at HP, and she spent afternoons working there in her senior year.

She entered Texas A&M (College Station, TX) as a physics major, figuring that the physics would apply to whatever track she finally decided on. After her first year she switched to computer science.

She worked at HP every school summer, but when she graduated in 2000 she decided to leave the corporate world and join APL. Working at the lab does require security clearance, but the data she deals with is not classified. “That makes it easier,” she says. “It’s a calmer environment.”

For example, no one is scared to share knowledge. “Everyone is so supportive; I have many people I can go to for help,” she says. Like many of her colleagues, Herrera is getting her MS at no charge at JHU.

Herrera notes that there are lots of diversity groups at work, including a council to promote women and minorities. “APL works proactively to improve its attention to diversity,” she says. “Anyone who works hard is respected and moves up.”

When looking for a job, says Herrera, “My friends went for the high salaries the corporate world offers. I probably make less money up front, but I have a great government retirement program, a completely free education, and a job that makes me happy on a daily basis.”

Robert Jiminian of Xerox: software to run the printers
Robert Jiminian was born in New York City, grew up in the Dominican Republic, then returned to the U.S. with his parents when he was fifteen. In high school in New York, he was introduced to a computer. “I liked it immediately,” he says. He entered City College of the City University of New York as a CS major and received his BS in 2000.

In school, he quickly found the SHPE chapter. “I saw SHPE as a networking tool, a way to find friends who shared my interests and background. I also served as chapter secretary, because I thought it was a great way to develop leadership skills.”

While working on a SHPE conference he met a recruiter from Xerox (Rochester, NY). “I was invited to Rochester for an interview and the job offer came right away,” he says. He joined the company as a software engineer as soon as he graduated.

Jiminian works on Xerox’s DocuSP controller software, which runs the company’s production printers. Most of the work is done using C on Unix workstations. Reports of possible bugs and new feature requests come in daily from clients and testers.

“In the morning I come in and find a problem report of things I need to fix or design issues that need to be addressed,” says Jiminian. He spends most of his time working on his modules, either alone or with other developers. “This is a team-oriented environment,” he says. “We’re all focused on getting the job done.”

Jiminian is a member of Xerox’s Hispanic Association for Professional Advancement (HAPA) and the company’s SHPE chapter. “Diversity adds to a company,” he says. “People who come from different cultures think differently and approach problems from various perspectives. When the global economy is reflected in a company, everyone gains.”

He’s currently working on an MS in software development and management at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Leugim Bustelo of IBM “works on things that will be really important in the future.”

Leugim Bustelo: emerging technologies software at IBM
“I’ve always been a gadget freak,” says Leugim Bustelo, a software engineer for emerging technologies at IBM (Armonk, NY). “I always played with electronic toys and watched tech shows on TV. But I never really got into computers until I was in college.”

Bustelo, who grew up in Puerto Rico, credits all those English-language TV programs with making him comfortably bilingual.

When he graduated from high school, he went to the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. His first computer class there was scary. “I didn’t understand the concept of programming and creating programs for the computer itself.” Instead of just muddling through, he set himself to figure out the logic behind the code he was writing. Soon he and the computer became the best of friends.

In his junior year Bustelo met an IBM recruiter at a university career fair. He was selected for a summer internship in the company’s Austin, TX facility. As he recalls it, the work was mostly hardware- related, developing a graphics card. “But I saw the impact of software programming on so many projects,” he says.

He received a BS in CS and EE in 1999 and completed an MSCS at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, IL) in 2001 as an IBM-sponsored Fellow of the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering (GEM). Then he returned to Austin to work for IBM full time.

They put him in the emerging technologies group, and that’s exactly where he wanted to be. “I’m working on things that will be really important in the future,” he says. “I wanted a bleeding-edge environment, and I have that here.”

Bustelo’s group concentrates on Web services, developing a framework for connecting businesses together. “I call it a Yellow Pages on steroids,” says Bustelo with a laugh. “It’s basically a tool that connects businesses and enables users to find absolutely anything they need. I believe that in a few years this will be crucial technology.”

Most of his work is done in Java on IBM’s own WebSphere tools. He also uses VisualSlick, an editor which lets him write and manipulate code. “I try to have several projects running at once so I can work on a variety of things during the day,” he says. “I have a laptop so I can work outside, at home, on the road, wherever.”

He also does a lot of studying to keep pace with the bleeding edge. “There’s a major emphasis here on keeping your skills up to date,” he says. “I do a lot of reading here.”

Bustelo loves the diverse community at IBM, and he’s in touch with many other Puerto Rican employees. But he cautions, “It’s important to consider your work first, and not to think of yourself primarily in terms of your ethnicity.”

Although leaving Puerto Rico was not a decision he took lightly, Bustelo is glad he made the move. “A lot of my friends from home are afraid to take this step, but there are so many opportunities here,” he says.

Hispanics using software
To round out our look at the field, Diversity/Careers also interviewed three rising young Hispanic engineers who, while they don’t develop software themselves, do employ it extensively in their work. Autos, paper products and semiconductors are the fields they’ve chosen.

Xavier Cardenas of Nissan: “Our systems tell us about the issues.”

Xavier P. Cardenas: overseeing car quality at Nissan
Xavier P. Cardenas works at Nissan North America’s product engineering investigation group (Gardena, CA). “I get paid to drive cars!” he reports with delight. “It’s just like in the commercials.”

You might say that the auto industry is in Cardenas’ genes. He grew up in Michigan and his father works for General Motors. “It even says in my high school yearbook that I’ll end up doing this,” he notes. “I was indoctrinated for it.”

Going to college was never a question, Cardenas says with a grin. “If I wanted to keep living, I knew I had to get a degree.” He went to Ferris State University (Big Rapids, MI) where he earned his 1991 BS in automotive and heavy equipment management.

Of course, his dad was hoping he’d join him at GM, but when he graduated he went to Nissan. He’s a project engineer with the drivetrain group project engineering investigation, and his team is charged with overseeing car quality. “We work with the designers to correct actual and perceived issues on all model cars,” he says.

Cardenas doesn’t write software, but he uses it extensively. For example, Nissan’s proprietary software lets the group look at warranty data graphically. “Our systems can tell me about an issue that as few as five people have noticed, and that’s a good enough reason to fix a flaw,” he says.

Right now, Cardenas is on the task force for a new vehicle launch. “We’ll build twenty cars and do our own internal quality audits until the launch,” he says. “When production begins we go on monitoring feedback from customers and deciding what changes and modifications to incorporate into our next design.”

Growing up in a small town in Michigan, “Being Mexican made us the most diverse family in town,” Cardenas recalls. “But here there are people from all over the world. Communication is open. Whichever plant we’re in, we sit with Japanese and American staff. There are no walls. Everyone gives input, and we all work together.”

The sense of teamwork is strong at Nissan. Every year the company puts on its own Indy 500-style race. “Engineering usually wins,” says Cardenas. As to his job, “It’s hard work, but I love it.”

Javier Cantu is team lead for proprietary processes at Kimberly-Clark.

Javier Cantu: minding the machines at Kimberly-Clark
“If anything goes wrong with the machinery they can probably blame it on me,” says Javier Cantu with a laugh. Cantu is team lead for proprietary processes at Kimberly-Clark (KC, Irving, TX), the global consumer products company. He works at the company’s R&D facility in Neenah, WI. It’s his job to make sure that changes that are made to the company’s production and process machines anywhere in the world are done correctly.

“We have to comply with local electrical and technical standards. So basically, my job is to take everything into account when we make any changes,” he says.

Cantu majored in electronics and communications at the Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico) and completed his BS in 1989. He began an MS program but put it aside in 1992 to work for KC de Mexico. He moved to KC’s Neenah, WI location in 1996.

At least ten different programming languages are in use at various KC divisions. “Obviously, I can’t master them all,” Cantu says – but he’s fluent in VB, C++ and Assembler and has a working knowledge of several other languages.

Cantu continually teleconferences with colleagues in other countries and also travels a lot. In fact, his daughter was born in Spain when he was on a long-term assignment there with his family. But now that he has a new baby son he’s trying to cut back on his travel time.

“Training is a big part of life here,” he says. “We have to keep up with technology or we can’t do our job right.” He both takes classes and teaches them. KC also offers a series of diversity classes, where “We learn how to do business with people from different countries as well as how to interact with other KC employees from different backgrounds,” Cantu says. He’s an active participant in KC’s Latin American Network for Diversity (LAND).

Recently, Cantu decided to complete the MS he started in Mexico. He’s enrolled in the satellite-delivered National Technical University curriculum, and hopes to finish an MS in manufacturing systems engineering in June 2003.

“You have to keep learning, even when it’s hard,” he believes. “It’s important – life is about learning.”

At IR, Begońa Dominguez heads a failure analysis group working on semis and wafers.

Begońa Dominguez heads a failure analysis group at IR
Begońa Dominguez grew up in Vera Cruz, Mexico tinkering with TV sets, microwaves, computers and any other electronics she could get her hands on. She did computer work in high school and was fascinated by semiconductors. “I loved the problems involved in building small chips and understanding how computers are put together.”

She entered college torn between computers and electronics. Her parents encouraged her to focus on her love of hands-on work; in electronics she would be able to build things, they thought. She earned a degree in electronics and communications engineering in 1990 from the Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey.

Then she moved to Tijuana, on the California border, where technology and industrial jobs are plentiful. She found a position with International Rectifier (IR, El Segundo, CA) that suited her perfectly. “They manufacture power semiconductors, wafers and chips – tiny components. It’s so interesting to me,” she says.

Two years ago, IR sent Dominguez to its facility in Temecula, CA. She went for a training program and stayed on as a permanent employee. Today she works as a failure analysis engineer. “My job is to figure out what causes failures in the wafer forms and package devices we make.”

Dominguez coordinates the reliability group, reviewing the problems that come in and assigning them to various engineers. She keeps most failures in the company’s late-generation devices for herself. “It’s more delicate work,” she says. “It requires close attention.”

Much of her work is done in the lab, where Dominguez uses electrical curve tracers, optical microscopes, electron microscopes and energy-dispersive x-ray technology. She also optimizes the image-capture software that records her moves in the labs and generates reports for later analysis.

The lab is busy around the clock, says Dominguez. “We can set our own hours as long as we get our work done. The company benefits, too – they get greater coverage with people coming in at all hours.”

At IR, diversity is easy to see, says Dominguez. “We have many nationalities here and many female managers.”

A bright future
IBM Lotus software VP Enrique Rodriguez says that when headhunters call, he doesn’t even have to think before he turns them down. “In addition to the exciting work I do, I’m committed to IBM because of the impact that we’re having on the Hispanic community,” he says. “We’re opening doors. And that trickles down to other companies as well.”

His advice to students: “Education is key. Look for companies that emphasize learning. Otherwise you can easily become obsolete.”

He urges Hispanic students to remember their ethnicity at the same time they focus on their careers. “You need to keep your sense of who you are and where you came from. Balance that with a sense of your goals and what you want to accomplish.”

And “Always, always keep your sense of humor.”

D/C

– Abbi Perets is a freelance writer based in Valley Village, CA.