The Horatio Alger Association selects high school seniors from a pool of highly qualifi ed applicants who have an outstanding GPA, have invested in their communities, and have faced great struggles, as exemplifi ed by Horatio Alger Jr. himself.


of diff erent systems, and how that convenience aff ects people in a myriad of ways.


Before being hired by HP, she rose through posts of increasing responsibility at Sun Microsystems for 14 years, and its CEO, Scott McNealy, stressed interoperability, collaboration, and cooperation.


Valdes praises technology’s ubiquitous presence and the ability to hire IT talent globally but notes how that competition raises the bar for the United States to attract, nurture, and produce its own STEM graduates.


To compete also means reversing the declining numbers of women in technology by creating measures that infl uence and demonstrate to girls and young women that careers of innovation have no boundaries.


Valdes says, “I wasn’t born in this country. My parents lost everything coming here from Cuba. In the United States, we don’t realize that many children all over the world don’t have any resources but [somehow] know they will get out of poverty. That’s what’s driving them to study—not learning code to be cool.”


Girls here need to understand how, for example, computer science relates to their lives. For example, Valdes says her granddaughter was unexcited by robotics classes until she learned that the Disney animation she loves is produced by software engineering. We need to make it fun and relevant.


To bring girls and women into IT, “We need to think about how the arts and the creative nature of computer science collaborate,” says Valdes.


In point of fact, Valdes says, “I love startups and new products and throw myself into them. You will begin to learn from failures.”


She also knows perseverance and www.hispanicengineer.com


ambition’s value. During her fi rst technology job search, she interviewed at Fujitsu, a Japanese tech company. At the time, Valdes possessed no engineering background and was a recent graduate of Caldwell University with a B.A. degree in psychology.


The recruiting manager told her what she lacked in knowledge. Valdes thanked him and went home and studied the subject until her knowledge “took the fear and mystery out of the job.” Then she called the recruiting manager for 40 straight days before securing a second interview, and she was off ered a job at its conclusion.


Valdes, who later earned an M.B.A. degree at the University of Phoenix considers her proudest career accomplishments as the recognition given by external organizations and her employers. These include 2014 awards from the Hispanic IT Executive Council and the CRN Women of the Channel. This year she was a “Power” panelist at the 2015 Professional Business Women of California Conference. Wherever she worked, Valdes says she always received “very good endorsements and was viewed as a transformation agent.”


Giving back is crucial. Valdes is a board member of My New Red Shoes, a non-profi t that gives 6,000 children in Silicon Valley the opportunity to shop for their own clothing, which bolsters their feelings of empowerment and choice. She also serves on the board of McClymonds High School in Oakland, CA, to help keep kids in STEM.


Another feeling of connection occurs when Valdes visits students at diverse high schools on career day and informs them, “I am one of you.”


Luis Febres


First Puerto Rican Ever to Win the Horatio Alger


Association Scholarship by Jamie Lynn Harris


Luis Alberto Febres, the fi rst Puerto Rican ever to win the Horatio Alger Association Scholarship, back in 1991, has exemplifi ed the type of drive the award celebrates throughout his life.


In Puerto Rico, growing up in poverty meant that both of Luis’s parents were illiterate. His father worked as a laborer on a sugarcane plantation, while his mother was the homemaker. Despite his parents’ back-breaking hard work, fi nances were very tight. “There were times where we didn’t have anything to eat,” he remembers. Both his father and mother understood the importance of education and the opportunities that it would aff ord their four children. “They were obsessed with the idea that [their] children were not only going to fi nish high school but also go to college.” And Luis and his three siblings did just that.


It was during his fi rst year at the University of Puerto Rico that he committed to joining the military. It had always been a dream of his. He grew up with an 8x10 photo of his closest cousin in his green military uniform on the mantel in the living room. Luis looked up to him and what that uniform represented: determination.


In 1992, he joined the U.S. Army National Guard and did his combat training at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, and his Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Lee


HISPANIC ENGINEER & Information Technology | SPRING 2018 35


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