Hispanic techies find rewarding careers in government work

Hispanic representation in the federal government and its contractors is not up to par yet, but it’s steadily growing

Agencies and private organizations that need bilingual skills have seen the greatest growth

Monique Rizer
Contributing Editor

Hispanics are the only ethnic group still underrepresented in the federal government and its agencies. At 7.7 percent in 2008 they are at about half their representation in the civilian workforce, but that’s up from 7.5 percent in 2007.

When it comes to technology, science and engineering the numbers are even lower. Gilbert Sandate, chair of the Coalition for Fairness for Hispanics in Government (Dallas, TX), says his organization estimates representation to be about five percent. The coalition advocates for Hispanic parity in all areas, “but we believe the technical occupations are especially important for the future wellbeing of the federal workforce and for Hispanics in particular,” Sandate says.

The coalition is comprised of representatives from other Hispanic professional organizations such as the National Association of Hispanic Federal Executives (NAHFE, www.nahfe.org), the National Organization of Mexican American Rights (NOMAR, www.nomarinc.org), and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC, www.lulac.org). Sandate is a former president of NAHFE.

The business-case scenario
“Just looking at it from a business case scenario,” Sandate says, “with the growth of the Hispanic population, the retirement of federal employees and the government’s charge to serve the people it represents, one would see the absolute necessity to have that representation.” He notes that agencies with a bilingual necessity, such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees immigration, customs and border protection departments, have seen the most Hispanic growth.

Eugenio Ochoa Sexton, executive director of human capital operations and services at DHS, points to efforts like the job fairs put on by NAHFE and LULAC. “We would like to expand representation of Hispanics throughout the department as well as increase their representation at the senior leadership ranks,” he says.

Many Hispanics working for the government, or for contractors and nonprofits associated with the government, say they are pleased to be giving back to the country and to their communities.

Carlos Godoy is chief scientist and advocate for Hispanics at NUWC
Carlos Godoy has a distinguished thirty-seven year career at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) division, Newport (Newport, RI). He is currently chief scientist at the division’s weapons analysis facility, which is the most advanced facility of its kind in the Navy, he says.

He’s done a lot of invaluable work in target physics, researching how submarines respond to sonar. This understanding helps engineers improve a torpedo’s ability to search, identify and destroy enemy submarines. For his work, he was given HENAAC’s lifetime achievement award in 2007 and SHPE’s STAR award for technical achievement in 2008.

“We are helping our nation’s warfighters, and that is the greatest reward. But for me personally, solving problems in technology and science is also a beautiful game that I really enjoy,” he says.

Godoy was born in Peru. He came to the U.S. when he was fifteen, and went on to a 1972 BSEE and 1975 MSEE at Tufts University (Medford, MA). His first job was with NUWC. “The government gave me that incredible opportunity to do research, take risks and not be afraid of failures,” he declares with pleasure and pride.

He has always worked to increase Hispanic representation in his division and throughout the Navy. He mentors co-op students from the University of Puerto Rico assigned to his division, and in 2001 he was part of a five-person team that received the division’s award for excellence in support of workforce diversity. He’s also a charter member of the Department of the Navy’s advisory council on Hispanic employment.

“For the last twenty years we’ve been working toward improving representation,” he says. “We’ve been able to influence this organization, and I am certain that we are leaders in attracting Hispanic scientists and engineers to the Navy.”

Opportunity with the Navy
Captain Michael Byman, commander, NUWC Division Newport, shares Godoy’s belief. “We strive to make diversity a reality through equal opportunity,” he says.

“We’ve made a concerted effort to increase the opportunity for Hispanic engineers and scientists at the division by establishing an educational partnership agreement with the University of Puerto Rico. We also participate in Navy Day events throughout the nation, most recently at the University of Texas at San Antonio,” Byman notes. “These efforts are absolutely critical to ensuring that we benefit from all available engineering and scientific talent in our nation’s diverse workforce.”

Captain Ken Barrett, head of the Navy’s diversity directorate, agrees that Navy leadership supports Hispanic recruitment and professional growth. “The Hispanic community is the fastest-growing demographic sector in our nation and the Navy is actively supporting numerous initiatives to connect with the ever-expanding market,” he says.

“This fall we observed Hispanic Heritage month and noted that more than 63,000 sailors and civilians of Hispanic heritage currently comprise about 11 percent of our active, reserve and civilian Navy forces.

“Hispanics have a rich history of honorable service throughout our Navy,” Barrett adds. “Today Joe Campa is our first Hispanic master chief petty officer of the Navy, our highest-ranking enlisted member.”

Gloria Huapaya develops weapon systems for the Army
As a systems engineering lead for the Armament Research Development
and Engineering Center (ARDEC, Picatinny, NJ), Gloria Huapaya is part of
an award-winning lab that develops and improves weapons and munitions
for soldiers.

Huapaya works in the enterprise and systems integration center. She collaborates with team leads from five functional areas to integrate technologies that will ultimately provide more effective weapon systems. She joined ARDEC in 2004 as a quality engineer for small-caliber munitions. The job involved working with contractors to be sure they were producing the ammunition to the required specs.

“Our job is critical, especially in time of war,” she says. “You want to get the materiel to the soldiers as soon as possible, and be sure you are providing them with conforming products that will always work. Their lives depend on it.” Huapaya received her BSME magna cum laude from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark, NJ) in 2003. She spent a year working for a private company before joining ARDEC. The organization is now paying for her MS in systems engineering, which she’s taking through the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA).

Born in Peru, Huapaya moved to Florida when she was sixteen. Her brother and father are also engineers. She believes that Hispanics who have recently immigrated have a unique drive that influences their work. “You have the desire to succeed, to improve from the life you had,” she says. “I think that’s one of the key things we bring.”

Wil Berrios is CIO for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Wil Berrios is one of just two civilian Hispanic execs in the entire Army. He spends part of his time promoting the hiring of Hispanic techies, informing Hispanic colleagues of leadership opportunities and encouraging students to consider STEM careers in the government.

“You try to do your part,” he says. “I’ve been provided with good opportunities.

“In the beginning I was very conscious that I was different. But that was in the 1970s. As I grew through the ranks my attitude changed, and I realized the important question was ‘Can I produce or not?’”

Looking back, there’s no doubt that he could and did produce. As CIO, Berrios is responsible for all IT and IM of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a body of 35,000 military and civilian employees who provide engineering services to the nation and the military. He manages a budget of $380 million.

Over his past nine years as CIO he’s led a major shift from a decentralized to an enterprise model of delivering IT services. The transition is projected to result in a $50 million savings in 2008 compared with 2007.

Berrios has always worked for the Department of Defense (DOD) in some way. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army after he got his BA in education with a math minor from the University of Puerto Rico in 1975. In 1980 he completed an MS in management science from Webster University (St. Louis, MO).

After ten years on active duty he was assigned to aviation testing, working with programmers. “I ended up teaching myself how to program and got into the IT field. I was writing programs to support statistical analysis and output and manipulating databases,” he says.

After leaving active duty he transitioned to the Army reserves, staying in government as a civilian. He continued to immerse himself in IT through work, courses and study. He was technical director of the U.S. Southern Command’s wargaming division in the office of the J-5, a project manager for the Army’s readiness management system and eventually lead engineer for some 30 percent of readiness systems in the DOD, involving monitoring and scheduling deployments for all forces within the DOD. He retired from the Army reserves as a lieutenant colonel in 1998.

“I did sometimes think about going to the private sector,” he admits. “But a couple of things kept me in government.

“One is service to the nation, of course. I think it’s a very noble cause. Also, you can be given a lot greater level of responsibility in government than in the commercial sector.”

Winston Beauchamp: technical exec at NGA
As deputy technical executive at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, Bethesda, MD), Winston Beauchamp is responsible for analyzing the agency’s suite of collection source systems in space and on the ground. “I also direct activities across the agency to better utilize sources we have and to protect those we need in the future,” he adds.

This is Beauchamp’s fifth senior executive position at NGA. He has spent twelve years at the agency in a variety of roles.

Beauchamp’s father is from Puerto Rico and his mother is Irish and Italian. He holds a 1992 BSIE from Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA), and completed his MSME at Villanova University (Villanova, PA) in 1995.

He began work at a private aerospace company which assigned him to a government facility. “I fell in love with government work and never went back,” he says. “I enjoy being close to the operational customer, and I could see the direct effect of my work in military operations.”

Leaving the private sector didn’t even mean a pay cut. He actually got a raise when he
joined NGA.

Besides his technical work, Beauchamp also chairs NGA’s Hispanic special emphasis program. “We look to assure Hispanic representation on boards and panels and inside recruitment activities,” he explains.

He notes that citizenship and security clearance requirements may preclude recent Hispanic immigrants from working in the government. “But that doesn’t explain all the disparity,” he says. “In national security work, I think Hispanic representation is not much more than three percent.”

He worked with many Hispanic colleagues when he led systems engineering at NGA, though, and notes that they were often promoted quickly.

To keep the pipeline of Hispanic techies flowing, Beauchamp wants to energize students early. “Identify likely careers earlier, inspire the kids sooner and show more concrete role models, especially in popular culture,” he urges. “Math and science teachers need to be truly positive about the work they’re doing and show that it’s really fun.”

Juanita Banda works on NRAO’s international team
In the international world of astronomy, scientists and engineers from North America, Europe and Japan are still several years away from completing the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). When this massive, sixty-six antenna instrument is completed in the clear air of the Chilean Andes, its high-precision antennas will combine to offer the highest quality radio telescope images ever attained.

Juanita Banda is an EE with the back-end photonics group at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO, Charlottesville, VA). Her group is working on the timing and reference signal for the ALMA antennas. “We generate a common signal to all the antennas,” she explains. “We are developing the first local oscillator and the distribution to the sixty-six antennas, as well as the line-length correction system.”

Banda, a first-generation Mexican American, has a 2001 BSEE from the University of Arizona. She began her career at NRAO’s Tucson, AZ location through a student co-op. “I thought I would move to another job in the private sector, but I never got around to it,” she says with
a laugh.

She finds that working for NRAO has benefits like a relaxed dress code and schedule. More important, “You also have the freedom to explore new ideas and different plans.”

Scientists and engineers from the ALMA site in Chile are frequently sent to work with Banda’s team. Her complete bilingualism is a big help; she can make the Chilean team members more comfortable and translate complex concepts for them.

She enjoys this camaraderie. “Before the Chileans arrived I was one of just a few Hispanic employees in Tucson. Now we work with several Chileans and that’s been great.”

Roy Norville, NRAO employment manager, notes that “Not only does Juanita relate well to our Chilean ALMA employees and visitors, but she is a super recruiter. Since joining the observatory she has recruited students and professionals at various EE conferences. Her enthusiasm for the field is quite contagious!”

Omar Medina: project manager at the Naval Research Lab
Omar Medina flew F/A-18 fighter jets in the Navy for five years before joining the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL, Washington, DC) in 2004. “I’m flying a computer instead of a plane so the pace is a little slower,” he says with a smile. “But you’re still serving your country, which is a priority for me.”

Medina holds a 1999 BS in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy (Annapolis, MD). He separated from the Navy as a lieutenant, joined NRL as an aerospace engineer and now leads the virtual mission operations center program.

His team is developing a website that will let senior military commanders work directly with satellites. “They will be able to request an asset and have it launched almost on demand, and once it’s on orbit it can be commanded through this website,” Medina explains. The program is in response to the service-wide operationally responsive space initiative.

Medina’s parents are from the Dominican Republic; he was born and raised in the U.S. Growing up he often visited family members still living in the Dominican Republic, and that gave him a different perspective about life in America. “I don’t take any of all that we have for granted,” he says. “I guess there’s a little bit of a fire generated in me because of that.”

Chico Moline: VP at Harris Corp
Chico Moline is VP for Navy and Marine Corps programs at Harris Corp (Melbourne, FL), an international communications and IT consulting firm. He works at the Harris Information Technology Services location in Dulles, VA, near Washington, DC.

Moline got to his current position primarily through his work on the Navy/Marine Corps intranet program (NMCI). He began as a network engineer and eventually became director of the entire program. The NMCI is the largest intranet in the world, connecting all Navy bases and 330,000 users.

Moline’s Cuban parents moved to the U.S. when Castro came to power. Their son was born in Washington, DC and grew up in northern Virginia. He earned a BA in economics at the University of Richmond (Richmond, VA) in 1985 and began in the business world, selling financial vehicles to international organizations with Spanish-speaking employees.

Taking a break from sales, he spent several years in the restaurant business. In the late 1990s he got interested in business again, saw the growth of the Internet, and decided to break in by completing an MSCE and CCNA in 1998.

In 2001 he joined Wam!Net, a networking company, and was put to work as a network engineer on the NMCI. Several acquisitions and company realignments brought him to his current job at Harris where he oversees all profit and loss and strategic growth within the company’s Navy and Marine Corps programs.

He notes that many Hispanics have joined the IT field during his career in the private sector.
“A great many IT people have a Hispanic background now; you didn’t see that ten years ago,” he says.

Jose Torres leads Mitre’s tech lab
Jose Torres is senior principal engineer at Mitre (Bedford, MA), and “I absolutely love it,” he says. The job includes flying to Cape Canaveral to watch satellite and shuttle launches. But best of all “I get to do R&D, which is basically playing around with new ideas,” he says with a laugh.

Mitre is a nonprofit organization that manages three federally funded R&D centers for several government organizations. Torres has worked there for twenty-two years. When he completed his 1984 BSEE at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) and 1989 MSEE at Northeastern University (Boston, MA), he went to Mitre because of its unique role. “I like that it’s nonprofit,” he says. “It keeps us unbiased in helping the government.”

For the first ten years he worked on internally funded R&D programs. Now he leads at Mitre programmable radio technology lab in Bedford, MA. For six years he headed several GPS projects, but now his work is mostly on military satellite communications.

Torres was born and raised in New York, NY; his parents are from Puerto Rico. His father, an electrician, pushed him in math and science. “My parents worked their way up to the middle class and that influenced me to get a degree and work hard,” he says.

He grew up in a mostly Hispanic community, but in college he saw fewer Hispanics, and more discrimination. He’s noticed a great improvement over the past twenty years. “Students have really changed in the way they treat each other,” he says.

Bill Albright, director of quality work life and benefits at Mitre, notes that diversity is crucial to the organization’s mission. “Mitre benefits from the innovation that results when people with different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives work together,” he says. “A well-managed, diverse workforce, including our Hispanic employees, expands our base of knowledge, skills and understanding.”

David Hernandez, PE: a career supporting the military
David Hernandez is a licensed professional engineer in Texas and Puerto
Rico. He currently works at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Borinquen (Aguadilla, PR).

Hernandez earned an associate degree in CE with a specialty in surveying at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez in 1976. He completed a BSCE at the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois in 1980.

Over his career he’s worked on projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy, Air Force, Army Directorates of engineering and housing and the Coast Guard. He worked on the construction of Aquilla Lake in Texas and helped with the extensive remodeling of Dyess Air Force Base in Texas as part of B-1B bomber development in the 1980s.

In 1990 Hernandez joined the U.S. Coast Guard civilian force. Now he works on projects around the huge Borinquen base, including maintenance, inspections and construction management.

Working for the Coast Guard as a civilian in Puerto Rico has its own special perks, says Hernandez. To begin with, Puerto Rico is his home. The cost of living is lower, he has good retirement and medical benefits, and his children went to school on the Coast Guard base.

In the course of his career Hernandez has worked in environments where Hispanics were the majority, like Texas and Puerto Rico, and where they were the minority, as in Chicago. “In Puerto Rico it’s easier in the sense that you’re surrounded by your own culture,” he says. “You have to speak Spanish because your contractors are mostly Hispanic and you have to be an interpreter for the military.

“When I went to the U.S. it was a cultural shock. But I’ve always been able to adjust. I think people respect the ability to move to a new environment and adjust quickly.”

Dr Rod Fontecilla: government clients at Booz Allen Hamilton
Rod Fontecilla, PhD is a principal at strategy and technology consulting
firm Booz Allen Hamilton (McLean, VA). He leads large-scale systems development for Washington, DC-sited government clients like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the Department of Homeland Security.

Fontecilla was born in Chile and raised in Venezuela. He completed his BSCS at the Université de Grenoble (Grenoble, France) in 1978 and a PhD in applied math at Rice University (Houston, TX) in 1983.

After earning his PhD he spent several years teaching computer science at the University of Maryland. But he “got the taste” for consulting while working on a project for the Navy, and soon joined an 8(a) consulting company fulltime. One of his first big government projects was building a GIS to track missiles moving by railroad throughout the U.S.

He joined Booz Allen in 1994 as an associate. Fifteen years later, he leads a team of 200 IT specialists, including many systems engineers and software developers. “It’s a pretty big group,” he says. “We cover many different markets, but still stay close to our roots, building large systems and looking to emerging technologies.”

His primary market is law enforcement. One of his team’s recent successes is a system to reduce the FBI’s security clearance process from eighteen months to as little as sixty days.

Fontecilla notes that diversity programs like the Latin American Forum at Booz Allen should be more widespread in order to increase the number of Hispanics working in all industries. Other leaders at Booz Allen share his belief.

Senior associate Jim Woodard points out that “Because our company sells ideas and solutions rather than tangible products, our success relies on attracting, retaining, developing and advancing the best talent. Exceptional talent is a limited resource, and working to bring
that talent into the firm and help talented people move up is the linchpin on which our
business turns.

“Hispanics within our workforce continue to increase their numbers and impact on the firm. Our Latin American Forum provides many opportunities to contribute to the firm and community through various activities,” Woodard concludes.

Shelley Cazares: researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses
Shelley Cazares is a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA, Alexandria, VA), a private but federally funded think tank. “We help our government clients tackle the difficult science and technology problems they face,” she says. “For example, if the government wants to buy a certain type of system or equipment, they may come to us to help them decide which product has more scientific and technological merit.”

Cazares is Mexican American. She earned her BS in EE and CS at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA) in 1998. As a Marshall Scholar she completed a PhD in signal processing and neural networks in 2003 at the University of Oxford, England. Her doctoral thesis was in biomedical engineering (BME). After graduation she joined Boston Scientific Corp (St. Paul, MN), a BME company then known as Guidant. She was a principal research scientist, designing improvements to pacemakers and other implantable cardiac devices.

After five winters in Minnesota, Cazares was ready for a change. “I thought about staying in BME, but I was getting more and more interested in government and politics,” she says. “I felt there was something I could contribute to the country.” She joined IDA in 2007.

At IDA, Cazares has worked on a variety of projects, like an assessment of sensors for detection and classification of unexploded ordnance, and an analysis of how to better anticipate increases in electrical power needs of military ground vehicles.

With the political changes and renewed enthusiasm in the election process, Cazares is hopeful that more Hispanics will consider public service as a career. “You’re contributing to a bigger cause,” she declares.

D/C

Monique Rizer is a freelance writer living in Alexandria, VA.

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