The Next Level
during the past four to five years, according to Carrion. “Getting through that period made it difficult to hold on to talent.”
However, he is extremely optimistic about what’s ahead.
“On the horizon is phenomenal opportunity,” he said, describing “massive infrastructure investments” that need to be made. “The nation’s cities are growing and will continue to grow. We are going to have to build smart transportation systems and multi-family marketplaces.”
He said the recession is coming to a close and the nation is poised to get back on track.
Carrion, 51, who grew up in New York City, recalls being infatuated with infrastructure and urban history. Earlier in his life, he was a seventh-grade public school teacher and, after having students study the physical history of the city and tak- ing them on tours of bridges and tunnels and interacting with City College architects and engineers, Carrion found him- self drawn to return to school to study planning and public policy. He earned a master’s degree in urban planning from Hunter College.
Carrion’s work at the White House resulted in the establish- ment of a White House Urban Policy Working Group and the first comprehensive interagency review in 30 years of federal government approaches and funding in urban and metro- politan areas. He has served as Bronx borough president and president of the National Association of Latino Elected
Officials. As borough president, Carrion ushered in an era of building and growth in the Bronx that increased annual in- vestment in the borough from $361 million in 2002 to almost $1 billion in 2008, including the development of 40,000 new housing units, 50 new schools, and two million square feet of office and commercial space. Working with his colleagues in the New York City Council and the New York State Assembly, Carrion shepherded the plan for a new Yankee Stadium and the stadium area redevelopment.
Carrion has high expectations for his new firm.
“I would like to see this company one of the marquee com- panies…the one that is the go-to, the first company people think of…when decision-makers are thinking about an airport expansion,” he said. And he added that he wants CSA Group picked consistently as the primary contractor, not just as a minority partner.
The father of three college-age daughters and a teenage son said balancing work and home came down to “very little sleep and lots of coffee.” His wife, Linda Baldwin, is the direc- tor of the U.S. Department of Justice S.M.A.R.T. Office.
“It’s a stretch,” Carrion said. “I try to give 100 percent to each part.”
As for advice he offers young people about charting a successful career, Carrion said identifying solutions to problems is tanta- mount, and finding ways to solve problems in everyday life is a good way to get started. “Everybody needs to get out of a jam.”
VIVISIMO TAPS INTO GROWTH MARKET OF DATA MINING
ot many people have had one of the world’s leading thinkers as their greatest influence. Raul Valdes-Perez, co-founder and former executive chair- man of Vivisimo, a “big data” discovery company that IBM purchased in April 2012 for an undisclosed amount, can.
N
When he was a computer science Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Valdes-Perez’s mentor was the late Herbert Simon, a Nobel Laureate in economics and a founder of the field of artificial intelligence. Decades later, Valdes-Perez credits Simon with a novel approach to critical thinking that still informs the former’s thinking.
by Frank McCoy
fmccoy@ccgmag.com from multiple fields of study.”
That perspective, in a way, is why big data discovery is so important. Valdes- Perez says that organizations store content in bytes by the trillions in a multiplicity of repositories, including file shares, CRM systems, SharePoint, multi- media, social media, web sites and other types of databases, but users need that content to be available on demand via a single access point.
Raul Valdes-Perez
Valdes-Perez says Simon simplified com- plex, multi-dimensional problems by showing that “real-world issues can be understood and addressed with insights
24 HISPANIC ENGINEER & Information Technology | 2012
A search crawler could collect and index the content, or search results from multiple engines could be combined separately so users can draw upon it. Valdes-Perez says that IBM was attracted
www.hispanicengineer.com
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