Reflections on a Difficult Year

By the time this is published, we will be a week or two away from 2021 and the vaccine will be on its way to millions of people across the country. The outlook will be bright, and we are going into 2021 hopeful for the future and eager to return to normalcy.

It wasn’t like that for most of the year 2020.

The year started hesitant with conversations about the impact of COVID on our activities, and with different camps disagreeing whether we should act immediately or whether it was premature. Long discussions on the fate of RLDCs even though we had already started and were well on our way to executing them. We were running all kinds of model assessments, from financial to feasibility, to understanding the impact of going virtual with most people willing to act and a few cautious. In the end, we decided to pull the plug and cancel the remainder of the RLDCs and immediately prepare for a virtual NILA with all the repercussions that brought, financially and work wise.

On our way to a virtual NILA with the staff doing an amazing job pivoting to pull together something we had never done before in record time, and with a few criticizing every move, we were broadsided by major social unrest. In the midst of all the difficult work, meetings, and deliberations trying to figure out how in the world we were going to pull off a virtual event without losing all the money already invested in physical infrastructure for the year, and figuring out what infrastructure was needed to go virtual, the death of George Floyd happened.

His untimely death, and particularly how it happened, plunged the nation into significant chaos of activism and reckoning. Despite our current preoccupation with planning a virtual NILA, we reacted quickly in solidarity with the community affected. But a segment of our membership did not believe this was sufficient. We had to put our NILA planning on hold and pivot, again, to understand the concerns and address them in a way that met the needs of all of our members.

To then scramble again and regroup to recover what was possible from the NILA work and get back on track with this never-before-done experiment of a virtual NILA.

NILA was a success beyond our wildest dreams, particularly in attendance and proving the ability to do the work right, but the success was short lived. We immediately faced doing the same thing but at 10 times the scale for the National Convention.

This caused, once again, the staff to pivot and scramble to minimize loses, find a platform able to do 10 times what we did at NILA, and a reasonable way to create a solid career fair so our partners, who do so much for us, would continue investing in SHPE despite the situation. This was a massive amount of work for the staff and everybody involved, including a few who became heroes, like the staff member who worked tirelessly despite a family member in the hospital, or the one who was able to negotiate and renegotiate contracts and recover almost all (not quite) of the money sunk into the in-person convention, or the one who recovered most of the IPCs, and many more.

We again spent a long time doing financial and feasibility scenarios trying to make sure we could do this without going bankrupt since that would have affected all the other programs we have in place for the year and our members ability to get jobs in the future not to mention the future of our organization. A major undertaking in spite of having people think that a convention of 10,000 people and 250 companies should be free since Zoom for 50 people is free. This complicated the work dramatically as we continued to squeeze costs and scramble to make the convention cost as low as possible. All this in addition to already having frozen salaries, hiring, travel, training, and almost everything else.

Much to our delight the National Convention was almost an absolute success. It was the best run virtual conference our IPC supporters had seen, without major glitches, with record number of interview touch points (over 95,000), and almost record participation. Unfortunately, we did not do as well as we needed to do financially as we retained Early Bird rates throughout the registration period and that put a hole in the finances. But at least we served our members and did not go under. A major achievement if you have a feel for the work and cost of putting together this type of convention virtually.

And as we’ve come to expect from 2020, our happiness was cut short by having to make decisions for the 2021 RLDCs, which will be virtual as vaccines won’t be broadly available by that time. With this year being so tight financially, and with virtual events needing so much work to ensure they are done right, we don’t have the luxury of having any RLDC underperform. Thus, we are scrambling, once again, to figure out models to make the whole RLDC experience successful or, at the very least, break even while meeting the needs of our members.

All of this takes your breath away, just thinking of the all the extra work of this year. And I didn’t cover the 1,000 smaller issues we faced due to the pandemic.

However, it also makes us think. It makes me think. And I come to a few conclusions or statements…

• There is nothing life can throw at us that our amazing staff can’t handle, and our Board can’t take.
• Our staff is amazing and have worked beyond the call of duty all year long. They deserve recognition by each and every one of us. We are here thanks to them. Any of these issues could have derailed us, and they didn’t thanks to their dedication and hard work.
• We are stronger in times of crisis when we come together. This year I witness the RVP team rise above regional issues and come together for the greater good of the organization and they did it with excellence.
• I saw first-hand the hard work of many of our chapter presidents and other regional leadership, helping us, as a whole, navigate through very difficult issues.
• I saw the selfless dedication and hard work of our volunteers from Board members to students, across all aspects, trying hard to do our best despite tempers being crispy in the midst of so much turmoil.

And, most of all, I learned, again for the umpteenth time, that no matter how good we do, no matter how heroic our staff is, how many issues we overcome, how successful we are, someone, somewhere will still be dissatisfied and will criticize us. And to that I say, so be it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, or Happy Holidays however you celebrate. We are a big family going into 2021 – hopeful for the future and glad we overcame the challenges of 2020 – with great plans to return to normalcy and continue the growth we have been for the past few years.

Merry Christmas and to all of you – THANK YOU for all you do to make SHPE the best it can be.

Miguel Alemañy
Chair, SHPE Board of Directors

Thanks to the true heroes, hasta luego to a friend.

The True Heroes

We just finished an amazing convention with almost 9,700 registrations. Over 90,000 screening interviews, over 200 exhibitors, and a never-ending stream of events, from Zoom, to webinars, to interactive sessions, to fireside chats with industry leaders. Several IPC companies commented this was by far the best virtual convention they have ever seen. In fact, one commented that SHPE is now the industry standard for virtual conventions. And we did all of this without any major issues or glitches, something about everyone else experienced.

We were able to help every student who needed relief or help with the registration, we attracted back almost all the IPCs who had to leave during the pandemic, successfully had our first APC (Academic Partnership Council, like the IPC but for academia), and helped a record number of people connect with their dream job, not to mention all the training, life stories, awards, experiences, and importantly, networking across the country.

Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that in record timing, without any prework and just NILA as a previous experience, we could pivot 180 degrees, cancel an in-person event of this magnitude, get a platform and production company ready, train everyone behind the scenes on how to work it, get hundreds of recorded talks with just 2-week notice, and deliver this experience. In fact, when we decided to go virtual, we were mentally bracing for the worst. Yet our amazing staff delivered an outstanding experience in record timing…

I often ask people, “who are our most critical and valued individuals in SHPE?” And I invariably get a myriad of answers. Our student members, after all they are why we exist, to help them. Our professional members, they give back to the organization and they are critical to our success. The IPC, they fund about half of our expenses so we can do our job. Our academia partners, they help with the source of talent for the organization. And similar responses. All of which are 100% true, these groups are critically important for us and without them we wouldn’t have the organization we have. However, I believe the most critical group and most important for SHPE is our staff.

Our staff are the lifeblood of the organization, the engine that keeps us running, the heart of our existence. To paraphrase someone else, if we lose all our members, if we lose the IPCs, if we lose our offices and assets, if we lose everything…but we keep our staff, we would, in no time, rebuild SHPE from the ground up and get us back to where we were before. Because our staff are the ones who make everything happen. Yes, we also have hundreds of volunteers and I see them in the same context as the staff, but volunteers come and go, and they have their own jobs and priorities and limited time. Our staff are 100% SHPE.

This convention saw amazing work from them. One person’s husband was in the hospital during the convention, yet she worked incredible hours to get things done. Several worked nonstop around the clock for days, over weekends, without any real breaks just to get things moving. And I saw many who I’d swear had the ability to be in three places at the same time. And not everyone was remote, some were with the production company working and fixing glitches as they happened so the public never experienced them. More incredibly, not once did I hear any of them complaining about the exhausting work, nothing, nada. All the conversations were very positive, either troubleshooting, planning for the next event, or helping someone else do well. It was an incredible act of selfless service in the interest of SHPE, in the interest of the greater good, and I thank each and every one of our staff for this.

As I said in my closing speech at the convention, our staff are our heroes, able to deliver impossible feats and do so with excellence. My, and the rest of the Board’s, thanks to all of you.

Hasta Luego to a Friend

Kathleen DuBois, Senior Director, Development and External Relations, is leaving us to pursue other interests.

I am very saddened by Kathleen’s departure as she has been a major contributor to SHPE in many areas: developing marketing that included the creation and distribution of SHPE’s new logo, enhancing our social presence, and, my favorite, spearheading a fundraising campaign that brought in almost a million dollars that was then allocated to scholarships and to COVID relief efforts. She demonstrated incredible ability to manage a large workload and succeeded in everything she did. She built and fostered strong relationships, both internal and external. To quote a Regional VP when Kathleen’s departure was announced “this hurts my morale, from upper management of staff she took the time to listen and acted on productive ideas, she was the Peacemaker, I will miss her.” An endorsement from one of her customers, and one that I personally vouch for.

She is amazing at thinking of win-win solutions, and was instrumental in ensuring that SHPE provided our constituencies with the messaging that showed our commitment to our members, our community, and the world as a whole.

She is an outstanding leader who will be sorely missed by those lucky enough to call her a colleague.

Her departure is bittersweet for her, as she loves it here and she loves and believes in SHPE’s mission. But she came across the opportunity of a lifetime, a job offer impossible to turn down and a great step forward in her career.

I won’t say goodbye or farewell to her, only say hasta luego as we will always have our arms open to her and would welcome her back if she ever wants to return.

Hasta luego dear friend. Good luck, wish you the best, and thanks for all you did for us.

M. Alemañy
Chair, SHPE Board of Directors

Orlando Gutierrez, The Passing of a SHPE Giant

Many people have passed through SHPE in its almost 50-year history. Some are transitory, few years and they are gone, some stay for the long run, some become lifetime members, and some make an impact and leave a legacy for years to come. This is a short story of one of them.

Orlando Gutierrez was President (the position of Chair of the Board was called President years back), from 1993 to 1995, a period that marked the beginning of one of SHPE’s biggest transformation, a period where SHPE started to mature into a larger professional organization with impacts on the industry, academia and government, and moving away from being just a student events group. In fact, it was Orlando, the recruiting lead for NASA since 1976, who brought NASA and SHPE into a partnership that has endured for almost three decades.

Orlando was a caring individual and mentored a significant number of people who later on became a generation of leaders for SHPE, many of which are still active in the SHPE universe.

• Orlando recognized my contributions on the SHPE board and influenced me (unknowingly) to run for SHPE president by allowing me to have a voice on the board. As a woman I accomplished much serving on the SHPE board and Orlando made me comfortable to do so. I remember going to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Hispanic Heritage event in Washington D.C. and being so excited to attend an event where the President of the United states would be present. Orlando tried to get as many of us SHPEsters as he could to attend. It is an event I will never forget. We were friends. We had many things in common. We worked for NASA, liked our steak raw, danced salsa and had strong SHPE/STEM/Latinx advocacy. – Melissa Villegas Drake, SHPE President 1995-1997.
• Orlando was a great mentor, a world class thermo engineer but most of all he was a tremendous friend. I will miss his chats, banter and domino games at the conference. I will miss my friend and the community loss a statesman with passion to move us all toward greater things. God bless Orlando. – Jose Rivera, SHPE President 1999-2003
• Orlando was the catalyst for our internship program with NASA and the driving force for securing funding for our Summer Institutes. He was a very caring man with a big heart. – Diana Gomez, SHPE President 2003-2009

He was particularly good at being inclusive, not only with the Board but with students and everyone else he met and mentored over the years. He changed the lives of many of the people he interacted with, some of whom where inspired to become lifetime members of SHPE and who are involved with SHPE even to this date.

• In 1976, I traveled to the University of New Mexico (UNM) for their career fair. It was my first recruiting trip and the first time I would lead my company’s recruiting team. Little did I know that it would be the start of a decade’s long involvement with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). It was there that I first met Orlando Gutierrez. He was the NASA recruiting team lead, so he and I were constantly vying for the top students. His vision, strategic thinking, and even temperament provided me with a Hispanic Role Model I had never had. It was his encouragement that led me to become greatly involved in SHPE for the next forty years. He was generous, gracious to all, and sympathetic. We lost a great man and there won’t be another like him. – Manny Hernandez, SHPE President 2009-2011
• As a recipient of the HONORES scholarship, a partnership between SHPE & NASA, Orlando made an impression on me early in my career nearly 20 years ago. He helped guide and mentor me throughout my internships at NASA. Orlando would travel to the NASA’s Langley Research Center from Baltimore and take us to lunch. He would accompany us to meet our leads at NASA and the projects we were working on, but more than that, he genuinely cared about us and wanted to know about us, our goals and the things that were most important to us, like most people, my family. Over the years, I’d connect with Orlando at the conferences or an occasional call. We’d pick right back up. Orlando believed in so many of us, and if there is one thing I will continue to do to honor his legacy is to help guide and mentor enthusiastic upcoming engineers, provide opportunities, and always invest in people by building lasting connections. May you Rest in Peace Orlando I will forever remember you and carry you with me. – Nicolyn Hernandez, Board Member 2012-2016

He started the work that later on was followed by many Presidents and Chairs and formed the foundation of the SHPE we currently have today. He leaves a critically important legacy, many lives changed for the better, a long list of today’s leaders who were mentored by him, and the satisfaction of knowing he had a major impact in the Hispanic community in this country. He is survived by his five children, eight grandchildren, and his brother. He will be dearly missed by us all at SHPE. Godspeed Orlando.

Vote

We live in a constitution based federal democratic republic. That is, we have an indivisible union of 50 sovereign States under a common constitution. It is a democracy because people govern themselves. It is representative because people choose elected officials by free and secret ballot. In other words, the basic foundation of who we are as a country is based on our ability to vote, our ability to elect people that will represent us and our values at the seat of government, write the laws that govern us, and manage the economy that sustains us. It is critically important, regardless of your political affiliation, that you vote. It is not only your right; it is your duty as a free citizen of this republic.

Last election cycle more people did not vote than voted for any candidate. That means decisions that rule our lives, our safety, our future… were decided by less than half of the people entitled to decide. It is important that you add your voice this year, it is important that you have a hand in how this country is managed, however you think it should be managed. More so the people reading this article because, by definition, you are all the leaders in STEM and will grow to become the future of our society. You will be the engineers, scientists, directors, vice presidents, etc. in the near future and will be creating the technologies that drive our society’s progress forward. Thus, voting for the government that will allow you to do that, voting for whomever you believe is best at managing the country, voting for the philosophy that best aligns with your values, is critical to insure your own future. Every vote counts.

Whatever you do this year, vote. Whomever you support, vote. Is your right and your duty.

M. Alemañy
Chair, SHPE Board of Directors

One of the most critical positions we have on the National Board, is the Liaison between the Board and the Regional Leadership, specifically the Regional Vice Presidents. This year, the Board appointed former Region 7 Vice President Edwin Moure Negron to the role and tasked him with revamping the position and rewriting the role definition.

For background, when the Board was 100% elected and had fairly high turnover of Directors, the RVPs were part of the Board. While that served us well as we were growing as an organization and finding our place in the nation, that approach was very tactical forcing the Board to be consumed with the day-to-day management of the organization. As a result, the long-term strategic thinking needed for the growth and financial stability of the organization was difficult to achieve.

To fix this, we changed the nature of the Board from a tactical one, managing the organization’s daily activities, to a strategic one, focused on the long-term direction of the organization and its financial stability. By appointing a CEO and staff team to manage the organization and freeing the Board to make longer term strategic choices, our organization has evolved into a very stable one with a solid financial position and breaking all kinds of membership, growth, and impact records year-over-year.

Because RVPs are part of operations, as managers of the individual regions, they moved from the Board into Operations. However, they also represent the pulse of the organization, something needed for the Board to make sure they don’t get isolated from the membership. So, at the time we made the Board change, we appointed a Board Director to be the Liaison to the RVPs, with information and perspective flowing back and forth to maintain that connection.

The RVPs are in an unique position to sit at the confluence of strategy and operations as they can feed into strategy what is happening in the organization, what works and what doesn’t, but at the same time they are executing the direction of the organization into their regions and insuring we stay on track. This is a unique and very valuable job that must be well connected to the Board.

For the past year, I joined the RVP team to get a feel for what was and was not working and got very valuable insight on our membership and, in particular, the undercurrents shaping our actions. This past year’s RVP team collaborated in all major issues being addressed by the Board and had significant input in the organization’s actions, from logo design to how to respond to social unrest.

This illustrated to me, and the rest of the Board, how critical the position of Liaison is to the managing of the organization and ensuring the Board is connected to the membership.

On July 1^st, I appointed Edwin as the new Liaison to the RVPs, with the express objective of redesigning the role to meet both the RVPs and the Board’s needs. At the September Board meeting, we approved the new role description. This will increase collaboration and efficiency for both the Board as well as Regional Management.

The next few months, as we deploy the new model, will be a learning period intended to result in a well-integrated management team. My commitment is to work each and every issue as it arises with Edwin and the current RVP team, so the position becomes effective and our integration seamless.

Our future remains bright, and our potential as an organization continues to grow by leaps and bounds, more so as our management models mature.

Miguel Alemañy
Chair, Board of Directors

We must stay focused on our mission and the positive change we are effecting for the betterment of the Hispanic Community.

I was asked recently why we exist. The person’s point was interesting; she showed me the efforts companies go to recruit minority employees and the outreach efforts to get these candidates. She felt our work was duplicative to what the industry was doing. It was a good conversation. But in the end, she understood the value we add to what industry does, plus all the work we do that companies do not. She was impressed.

But that made me think…what do we do, and how laser focused are we on our mission given the chaotic world in which we live, and the turmoil we are experiencing every day.

In a nutshell, we raise money from industry and government, along with foundations, private donors, and special programs, so that we can ignite young Hispanic students to pursue a career in STEM, go to college, stay in college, graduate, and then help them find a job that meets their personal needs. In the process, we help better the lives of thousands of students and their families and help the Hispanic community reach its potential in this area. We are looking at expanding our offerings to include K-9 and 3 years after graduation all the way to C-suite. But we want to do this by partnering with other organizations that specialize in those areas, so that we can fully serve the Hispanic STEM community end to end.

We tried to do it all in the past and that diluted our efforts. By focusing on the area where we are best, -3 years from college to +3 years after college, we have become incredibly effective and in fact, our organization has grown by leaps and bounds during the last 5 years. We are effecting a positive change in our society larger than anyone could have imagined 5 years ago, and we are just getting started. We have an exciting bright future ahead of us and can help better the lives of so many more people with our work.

Which is why is critically important we stay laser focused on why we exist, why are we here, and what is it that we do that matters to the population we serve. This is becoming harder and harder every day. From our own internal tendency to proliferate programs and bring new offerings constantly, which at times causes us to dilute our focus as we did years ago when we tried to be all things to all people, to the constant external pressures that make us take the eye off the wheel.

Our programs are great, they add depth to the service we offer and offer a richer experience to our members. The issue is that while this is great, we are asked to create new ones all the time, some of which may not even be within our focus area. New programs create more overhead, which create more complexity, which requires more staffing and attention, which requires more money. Additionally, programs tend to take a life of their own and the program becomes the objective, not the benefit the program creates. So, we must maintain a balance between our increasingly rich experience for our members and the complexity level we create. We are in a good place right now, but we must stay vigilant to maintain a reasonable pace.

Our external forces are the more difficult ones to control because they either affect our ability to deliver our mission directly, like COVID, or tug at our heart and our social conscience, like the recent social events have done. Critically important, we can’t ignore either one. The first forces us to pivot to maintain our service level and quality. If we don’t, we can’t deliver our mission. Our staff is doing an outstanding job adjusting to the new reality and I am very impressed at how they have adapted. Next time you talk to someone in the staff thank them for keeping us on track despite COVID.

The social events forces are easier to control because they don’t hit us directly. However, are much harder to manage because they appeal to our social conscience of fairness and justice. They hit our heart and emotional empathy, and those are powerful drivers. We all want to fix the DACA issue, we all want justice for the people recently killed, we all want a stop to what is happening to minority communities, we all want to help, we want to work to end the situation.

Our challenge becomes how to be part of the solution society needs without losing our mission. If we reallocate all our energy to fighting social issues outside our mission, our mission stops and thousands of Hispanics across the nation could have a major setback in their plans to get ahead. Students would drop out of school for lack of funds, never finished college and their dreams shattered.

Our challenge is to find a way to register our support and help work those issues that hit us without losing focus on our mission, something directly in our control. We would be doing a disservice to our Hispanic community by dropping it in favor or working issues not in our control, and that we cannot deliver to fruition.

It is doable by the way; we can do this! It would take for example a chapter that decides to fund raise for a social cause to also fundraise for SHPE scholarship. Is not “either/or,” it has to be “and…”. Keep the focus on the mission and add helping others if critically important. But, to use the same example, we shouldn’t drop fundraising for SHPE in order to fundraise for a social cause outside the scope of our mission. As I said earlier, we can do this!

We have a bright future ahead of us, and we can continue increasing our impact on society by helping the Hispanic community reach its potential, to do that we must stay focused on our mission regardless of all the distractions thrown our way. It is why we exist.

Miguel Alemañy
Board Chair, SHPE

We must stay focused on our mission and the positive change we are effecting for the betterment of the Hispanic Community.

I was asked recently why we exist. The person’s point was interesting; she showed me the efforts companies go to recruit minority employees and the outreach efforts to get these candidates. She felt our work was duplicative to what the industry was doing. It was a good conversation. But in the end, she understood the value we add to what industry does, plus all the work we do that companies do not. She was impressed.

But that made me think…what do we do, and how laser focused are we on our mission given the chaotic world in which we live, and the turmoil we are experiencing every day.

In a nutshell, we raise money from industry and government, along with foundations, private donors, and special programs, so that we can ignite young Hispanic students to pursue a career in STEM, go to college, stay in college, graduate, and then help them find a job that meets their personal needs. In the process, we help better the lives of thousands of students and their families and help the Hispanic community reach its potential in this area. We are looking at expanding our offerings to include K-9 and 3 years after graduation all the way to C-suite. But we want to do this by partnering with other organizations that specialize in those areas, so that we can fully serve the Hispanic STEM community end to end.

We tried to do it all in the past and that diluted our efforts. By focusing on the area where we are best, -3 years from college to +3 years after college, we have become incredibly effective and in fact, our organization has grown by leaps and bounds during the last 5 years. We are effecting a positive change in our society larger than anyone could have imagined 5 years ago, and we are just getting started. We have an exciting bright future ahead of us and can help better the lives of so many more people with our work.

Which is why is critically important we stay laser focused on why we exist, why are we here, and what is it that we do that matters to the population we serve. This is becoming harder and harder every day. From our own internal tendency to proliferate programs and bring new offerings constantly, which at times causes us to dilute our focus as we did years ago when we tried to be all things to all people, to the constant external pressures that make us take the eye off the wheel.

Our programs are great, they add depth to the service we offer and offer a richer experience to our members. The issue is that while this is great, we are asked to create new ones all the time, some of which may not even be within our focus area. New programs create more overhead, which create more complexity, which requires more staffing and attention, which requires more money. Additionally, programs tend to take a life of their own and the program becomes the objective, not the benefit the program creates. So, we must maintain a balance between our increasingly rich experience for our members and the complexity level we create. We are in a good place right now, but we must stay vigilant to maintain a reasonable pace.

Our external forces are the more difficult ones to control because they either affect our ability to deliver our mission directly, like COVID, or tug at our heart and our social conscience, like the recent social events have done. Critically important, we can’t ignore either one. The first forces us to pivot to maintain our service level and quality. If we don’t, we can’t deliver our mission. Our staff is doing an outstanding job adjusting to the new reality and I am very impressed at how they have adapted. Next time you talk to someone in the staff thank them for keeping us on track despite COVID.

The social events forces are easier to control because they don’t hit us directly. However, are much harder to manage because they appeal to our social conscience of fairness and justice. They hit our heart and emotional empathy, and those are powerful drivers. We all want to fix the DACA issue, we all want justice for the people recently killed, we all want a stop to what is happening to minority communities, we all want to help, we want to work to end the situation.

Our challenge becomes how to be part of the solution society needs without losing our mission. If we reallocate all our energy to fighting social issues outside our mission, our mission stops and thousands of Hispanics across the nation could have a major setback in their plans to get ahead. Students would drop out of school for lack of funds, never finished college and their dreams shattered.

Our challenge is to find a way to register our support and help work those issues that hit us without losing focus on our mission, something directly in our control. We would be doing a disservice to our Hispanic community by dropping it in favor or working issues not in our control, and that we cannot deliver to fruition.

It is doable by the way; we can do this! It would take for example a chapter that decides to fund raise for a social cause to also fundraise for SHPE scholarship. Is not “either/or,” it has to be “and…”. Keep the focus on the mission and add helping others if critically important. But, to use the same example, we shouldn’t drop fundraising for SHPE in order to fundraise for a social cause outside the scope of our mission. As I said earlier, we can do this!

We have a bright future ahead of us, and we can continue increasing our impact on society by helping the Hispanic community reach its potential, to do that we must stay focused on our mission regardless of all the distractions thrown our way. It is why we exist.

Miguel Alemañy
Board Chair, SHPE