The Right Choice at the Right Time

Hola Familia! Miguel Alemany, here, coming to you solely as your Board Chair once again. As you know, two weeks ago I relinquished my duties as Interim CEO as the Board officially appointed Dr. Chris Wilkie to the position. He immediately became fully operational in the role, and the transition was instantaneous!

You might be thinking, “Wow! That is quick.” And you’d be right. But that is also the point. Because of Chris’ broad experience as SHPE’s COO, there was no need for a brain dump or State of the Organization evaluation. We didn’t have to do staff introductions or a financial audit. No one had to give him the “lay of the land.” Chris just hit the ground running, and that is exactly what SHPE needs right now.

After an extensive search, resulting in over 140 candidates, Korn Ferry (our third-party executive search firm), vetted all the candidates, and ensured that we assessed each applicant based on their skills and track record. And Chris immediately rose to the top.

Chris understands the intricacies of our organization, our strengths and weaknesses, sensitive topics and points, and our fantastic capabilities. He is poised to execute the newly revised Board strategy and take us to where SHPE needs and wants to go – continuing our 6 years of record-breaking growth and impact.

Chris is beloved by the staff, and respected by the IPC and industry leaders. And he has the support of the Board who knows him well.

For the last four years, Chris has worked extensively with the Board and its members’ different leadership styles. So, as we prepare to work with our new Board this year, I am confident that he will successfully manage the Board interface and create the synergy we need between Board and staff.

As you will see soon, a new Strategic Plan will be unveiled during the Convention at the National Meeting. And while it is not a dramatic departure of where we are going but an extension of the goals and objectives we’ve been striving for throughout the last 6 years, it is still ambitious. Chris will have his hands full taking us to new heights! But his built-in understanding of SHPE will make it possible as he capitalizes on a momentum of growth. In fact, he already has a few new records he plans to break this fiscal year (keep your eyes on membership and budget!).

So, as you can see, I am thrilled that we have such a passionate, capable, and accomplished leader at our helm. He knows how to deliver on our mission and strategy. I can’t wait to see what SHPE does over the next 5 years with Chris at the helm!

Onward,

Miguel Alemañy
Board Chair

An Agenda for the Year Ahead

It is hard to believe that I am entering my last year as SHPE’s Board Chair. It has been both an honor and a privilege to watch this great organization achieve record growth, weather a global pandemic, come out of it stronger than ever, and, ultimately, increase the number of Hispanics in STEM careers around the world.

I have laid out an ambitious agenda for this final stretch, almost three years of regular work in one year! But I am confident that with the help of our incredible staff and fellow board members, we can make it happen and set SHPE up for another 50 years of success.

My priorities are as follows:

• As you well know, we are currently in an intense search for SHPE’s next CEO. And it is my most pressing goal to hire and train this successor, ensuring they are ready to hit the ground running the moment they are confirmed. The vetting process has been exhaustive and that takes time, but we need it to make sure we get the right person and not make compromises.
• We are one SHPE, and as such, I am integrating the Regional Vice Presidents (RVPs) into Operations so that they are part of the overall organizational strategy and communications. While this should have been done from the beginning, I am committed to fixing it now. This will eliminate some of the alignment and communication issues we’ve had over the past few years. Being new territory, if the initial model doesn’t work, we will work to modify it until it does. We are problem-solvers, after all! It’s what we do best.
• With the new fiscal year, comes a new Board of Directors. 60% of the membership will be elected or appointed to their first term ever. From both this freshman and veteran cohort, the next Board Chair needs to be elected. My goal is to have this person identified and confirmed months before the end of my term so we overlap and have a seamless hand-off.
• As a Board, we will review, modify, and reaffirm both a short-term and long-term strategic plan. Our current plan has served us well for the past 6+ years, but given how much we have grown, how strong and stable we are, and the level of professionalism of our staff, we need to take it to the next level. We will lay out a firm blueprint for the next 5 years, an anticipatory roadmap for the next 10 years, and a broad scale vision for the next 50.
• In preparation for the next CEO, I’ll be reviewing and resetting (where needed) our staffing structure. This will ensure that from day one, our new leader will be able to focus on driving SHPE and not worry about personnel imbalances. In this effort, the COO role will be reestablished and strengthened as truly the head of operations to keep our staff and the day-to-day work running as smoothly as possible. Additionally, with the RVPs reporting into Operations, we will have a seamless communication and execution mode to increase our efficiency managing SHPE.
• Two weeks ago, three of our Board Members donated a total of $25,000 to SHPE, hopefully kicking off a new era of individual philanthropy. While we are continually grateful for the financial support that the IPC and Career Fair brings in year after year, we also acknowledge that individual donors will ultimately give us the fiscal stability we need as an organization. A new focus will be placed on establishing a firm culture of giving among our members (past and present), volunteers, and board. In fact, we now have a person in charge of philanthropy whose sole job is to create the culture and increase donations.
• We will finish the rollout of systems that will:
  • Simplify operational check and balances
  • Install a separation of powers in Finance to increase accountability
  • Institute a new expense reports system for employees, Board, and volunteers
  • Enact the auto renewal of memberships, so that we don’t have to sell SHPE to the same people every single year
• Additionally, I hope to define our purpose (something we had planned for the year the pandemic hit but had to pivot to accommodate the new reality).
• And, finally, I hope we can clean-up some of the issues in our bylaws (like the classification of Lifetime members for voting purposes, etc.) that interfere with our efficiency.

As you can see, this is an aggressive list. But SHPE deserves nothing less. Thank you for joining me in making our Familia the best it can be. Now, let’s get all of this delivered!

Miguel Alemañy
Chair, SHPE Board of Directors

SHPE and Growing up Hispanic in Corporate America

I am often asked why I spend so much time with SHPE as a volunteer. It is an interesting question because I didn’t know SHPE when I went to college, so I am not the product of SHPE. SHPE was barely starting and limited to Los Angeles at the time, and I went to school in Puerto Rico, literally the other side of the country. Additionally, I spent 40 years+ in Corporate America and now have my own business, so the kind of professional development SHPE offers today doesn’t really apply to me. Not that I don’t have anything to learn, one learns until the last day, but the focus of SHPE currently is the first few years at work and I went through that long time ago. So, the time I spend with SHPE doesn’t benefit me professionally in any way (other than the personal satisfaction of helping others), and that seems to puzzle some of my friends. But there is a reason.

I want Hispanics as they come out of school and go into the workforce to become as successful as they can right away and not waste years trying to figure out how to fit in culturally as I did.

When I started work, I was one of the first, if not the first, Hispanic ever hired in Research & Development (R&D) at my company. While today Hispanics number about 60 million, and are fairly distributed through the country – not to mention a constant topic in the news due to politics, events, entertainment, sports, etc. – that wasn’t the case back then. At that time, there were barely 14 million Hispanics mostly concentrated in key specific areas, like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. I had moved to Ohio in the Midwest where I was an oddity that the company didn’t really know how to manage as an employee.

My first 5-10 years were incredibly frustrating. I myself didn’t even know where I fit. This became clear to me as time progressed and I felt I was an outsider, a stranger in my own country. Not only didn’t I understand the culture of an Anglo corporation, but the corporation also didn’t understand mine, or even know what to do with me.

For example, in my first 6 months I received a visit from an HR manager quite concerned about my employee file, which surprised me since all my school graduation and degree papers were correct. She was very polite but emphasized the issue was grave. You see, she could not find my green card on file, so they had no record of my permission of employment. At first, I freaked out, I didn’t know I needed permission of employment and told her so. She said that all foreigners needed paperwork to be able to work in the United States. At that point I realized she must think I am a foreigner because of my accent so I told her I am a U.S. citizen. She said we were ok then and left, only to return the following week to tell me she had checked with her manager and I did need a green card because I was born in Puerto Rico and not in the U.S. That really got me very irritated, so I told her I did not need a green card, considered the issue solved, and went back to work. She got quite upset and said she would return.

The HR manager returned the next day with a corporate lawyer. The lawyer patiently explained to me the law and why I needed a green card to work in the U.S. I patiently thanked him and told him I did not need a green card because I was born in Puerto Rico. To which he stared at me in disbelief for a second, turned around to the HR manager and said, “why are you wasting my time?” At that point the HR manager turned to me and said, “I don’t get it, it is the law.” She then got up and left too and never came back. I assume someone must have set her straight. But that was the first or many instances where coworkers referred to me as a foreigner or as an immigrant, a never-ending reminder that I was an outsider and didn’t belong in my own country.

What I didn’t realize is that I was continuously reinforcing the perception because my behavior and approach were different than anyone else at work. In fact, I describe the first 5-10 years of my career as hand-to-hand combat, having to prove myself every day. I had to be twice as good as anyone else to be considered just half as bad. I would be in meetings and share an idea and the meeting leader would thank me for it, ignore it, and move on. Only to have someone else in the meeting say the same thing and be praised for the great idea. At first, I didn’t say anything but after a while I started complaining that it was the same idea I shared only to get condescending agreements without explanations and my concern totally ignored.

One particular day I had a test in the pilot plant and had to make a certain amount of product for testing. Because the amount was going to take me overnight to finish, I asked my coworker, Peter, if he could stay over and help me. We were good friends and he agreed, and we had a fantastic run, made all the product at target quality for testing. We finished around 7 am and we left to go home, clean up and change (it was a messy process), and I was to return for the 9am team meeting to talk about the overnight run. On my way out of the office, dead tired and feeling like I needed 10 beers and three days of sleep, I ran into…the boss! He asked me how I was doing, and I told him I was doing great, was just going home to change and would be back. He smiled, I smiled, and I went home.

Back at the office for the 9 am team meeting we were all in the conference room and the boss started the meeting. He said, “before we start the meeting, I want to congratulate Peter for the outstanding run of product last night.” This surprised me. Peter was not at the meeting. I spoke up and said that had been MY run. To which the boss said, “of course ,and Miguel too for helping.” I was in disbelief! Peter had taken credit for my work. My actual friend had done that!

When I saw Peter the next day, I was very upset and called him on what he did, but he had no idea what I was talking about. We argued for hours and eventually I went to talk with boss. Well, it turns out Peter was right, he never took credit, at least not on purpose. What happened was on his way out he also ran into the boss and the boss asked him how he was doing. Unlike me, who said I was doing great even though I was dead tired as I was taught by my upbringing to always be positive, he actually said how he was. He said he was dead tired, was at the pilot plant all night and while the team made all the product, he needed sleep badly because had been up 24 hours making the amount of product needed. Boss assumed the run was Peter’s and not mine given our answers. That was the first time I realized my culture was getting in my way, and my company’s culture was not agile enough to understand this or help me understand it.

The second and critical time this was made clear to me was about a year later when I was fired.

The boss of my boss came to see me and told me the management team had done evaluations for the year and my rating had not been good. He said I was rated 5 (on a 0-100 scale), because they felt rating me 0 was demeaning (as if being rated 5 was not demeaning enough…). I was shocked! I had been working hard, long hours and I had done all that my boss had asked of me. I thought I was doing great. However, he indicated my performance was poor, I was only executing orders without any initiative, any self-direction and while the output had been ok, anyone can follow orders. Additionally, they deemed me unassertive, meek, quiet, uninvolved, and simply I was not the kind of person the company wanted so they were going to let me go. This was a shocker. They were firing me! So, I said no. I said I liked it there, I liked the work, and I didn’t want to leave. He indicated that was not my decision, but they would provide me with assistance and resources to find another job. And I again said no. And he got up and left. I suspect no one had ever refused to be fired before so he didn’t know what to do.

I kept coming to work every day for the following week and no one told me anything. But I wasn’t getting any work and my boss had no time to meet with me, in fact he wondered why I was still coming to the office. After several days I realized I needed to do something and reached out to a senior leader in a different division with whom I had become friends. Not surprisingly his first reaction was to ask me why I was still there since they had fired me. I explained I didn’t want to leave, and I told him I thought I was doing a great job. He shook his head and said I was not. Thankfully he took a few hours and explained why.

It took me a long time, way over a year, to realize my culture, and importantly how I behaved, was at play here. Everything I was taught. The non-assertiveness, like not making eye contact with persons of authority as that was disrespectful. Being non-challenging, because challenging authority was wrong even if you knew the person was mistaken. Just following orders – I had great ideas, but it would have been disrespectful to tell my boss my idea was better than his, and so on. It opened my eyes. I didn’t know how to fit in, the company didn’t know how to help me fit in either and, worst of all, neither I nor company were aware. The assumption was it was just poor performance.

I asked the senior manager for another chance. I told him I understood what the issue was and that I could turn that around, if only I had a chance. He didn’t quite believe me, and he took another week to think it and talk to other people but eventually he came back and he gave me the chance. They moved me to another division to have a fresh start unencumbered by my previous experience.

I struggled dearly with the issue. Struggled to figure out how to change the manner I interacted with people, to erase or suspend some of the behaviors I was taught, but still be myself. To change and fit in without losing my identity. No work was worth changing who you are, but eventually I realized I could change my approach and behavior. I studied all my friends. I actually paid attention to how they went around tooting their own horn, how they challenged authority, how they behaved in meetings, how they spoke up when needed, etc.It was incredibly difficult since it really touched everything that made me who I was, but I learned. I fought long and hard to adapt, to learn how to work in the Anglo corporate culture. And 2.5 years after I was fired, the boss of my boss, who originally fired me, started reporting to me.

Critically important, the only thing that changed is that I learned how to adapt to the culture I was working in, which was quite different than the culture where I grew up. I didn’t become more intelligent, my degree did not become better, my accent did not disappear. I simply understood what corporate Anglo America valued, what they wanted, what is the proper behavior, not good or bad, just the one accepted for the company. Because nothing was against my principles, I adapted to the work and was able to move forward.

This is why I am with SHPE. I don’t want any graduating Hispanic to go through the kind of hand-to-hand combat and painful discovery that I went through when I started. There is no need for that, we now know how to train people to be successful, how to share best practices, how to develop leadership skills so that everyone rises to the highest skill level possible. I’m still not good at tooting my own horn, but I understand the need to share with our managers what we do. Working in silence and magically expecting rewards doesn’t work.

Granted, today’s environment is different. Companies have learned that there are other leadership styles. They have learned that some new hires require specific training to help them fit quickly with the company’s culture and some don’t. My own organization has gone from not knowing what to do with the Hispanic kid to being one of the most progressive workplaces for Hispanics in the country.

But there will always be more work to do. Students are moving from an environment with curves to one with actuals; from an environment where you are assessed in the absolute to one where you are assessed against your peers; an environment with no worries about social media to one where anything you post can and will impact your career and employment; an environment where diversity is normal to one where is getting better but is not quite there yet.

The key point is that it was very difficult to succeed as a Hispanic in an Anglo company 40 years ago, but organizations like SHPE have changed that by training students who later on become employees and help others, as well as, creating awareness in the workforce by working with our industry, academia, and government partners. This is why I support SHPE, to help it continue to evolve our society until these differences disappear. In fact, absolute success would be not needing SHPE. We are not there yet, and we won’t be there for another generation or two, so we need to continue supporting SHPE and the work it does for our community. We need to maintain our course and have many more people help us.

Join, volunteer, donate…. support SHPE.

Miguel Alemañy
Chair, SHPE Board of Directors

Keeping our community together maintains our strength and influence

A group’s strength (and power) is measured by the bonds that brings it together, while its weaknesses are measured by the differences that divide it. The stronger those bonds are, the more powerful the collective organization can be. The more the organization fragments itself into smaller subgroups, the weaker it gets until it becomes irrelevant.

The Hispanic community comes together under one umbrella. We all have a common ancestry with the people of Spain and Latin America, which share the Spanish culture as a common thread. Some of us don’t speak Spanish, but some of us do; some of us never been to Latin America, much less to Spain, but some of us have; some of us were born in the U.S. and some of us emigrated here. Some of us are Black, some of us are White, some of us are Asian, and some of us are every possible mixture in between. But we all carry the same culture and to great degree, values. We represent the Hispanic culture, a rich and mature culture equivalent to the majority Anglo culture in this country.

The term Hispanic was given to us as a community in the 70s by the Nixon administration to describe people of Spanish descent for the U.S. Census. Over the years, some people felt uncomfortable that the nomenclature was given to us without our input. For example, my mother always defined herself as an American of Spanish descent, never as “Hispanic” since she didn’t choose that descriptor. For others, it represented the culture of the conquistadores (it does), and they resented that. For this reason, during the early 90s the term Latin (or Latino), emerged out of the West Coast. The Los Angeles Times was the first to use it instead of Hispanic, although it didn’t replace it. Today the East Coast predominantly uses Hispanic while the West Coast predominantly uses Latin or Latino to describe our community.

Industry and government agencies over time have evolved to using Hispanic and Latino interchangeably. Further, in the name of inclusion, during the early 2000s, the term was expanded to include also Portuguese and Brazilian, which while technically not Spanish culture, their culture is similar enough to appear the same. As such today the term Hispanic applies to people whose culture originated in the Iberian Peninsula and all of Latin America.

Lastly, it is important to note that the terms Hispanic and Latin apply to people living in the U.S. and not to people worldwide who speak Spanish. For example, there are no “Hispanics” in Spain, there are Spanish or Spaniards. There are no Hispanics in Latin America, there are Latin Americans (or Colombians, Mexicans, Argentinians, etc.). Additionally, the term Latin (or Latino), outside the U.S. means anyone whose culture and language comes from the original people of Rome. As such Italians are Latin, and so are for example Albanians, Spanish, Moldavians, French, Romanians, Portuguese, etc. So, be careful while using these terms outside the U.S. as it can be confusing to the country you may be visiting.

But, in this country, for the last 50 years, Hispanic and Latin/Latino have united us into a common strong and powerful community and getting more so year on year. It is from this community that our organization was born: The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. And it is this community what gives us the needed presence and voice in all things STEM in front of the government and industry. They pay attention to our mission because of our size and strength, and this allows us to raise more money and send even more students to school to study STEM. It’s a virtuous cycle. The more we grow, the more we influence we have and the more we can help the community grow, which in turns gives us more influence, etc.

It is for this reason that I worry about a growing trend in the community, the efforts to rename and rebrand us into ever smaller, more confusing terms. This constant need to fracture ourselves seems to be ingrained in who we are and has always been. It is a full-time effort just trying to keep us together as a community.

Other communities are not like this. For example, at certain company, 3 or 4 African Americans get together and decide to form an Employee Resource Group to work issues of common interest, and they form the AA ERG. The AAs at the plant hear about this and they immediately join the AA ERG and create a larger and stronger ERG. Then the AAs in the sales force hear about it and join and strengthen the team. As the AAs at the satellite offices around the nation do as well, until one day, the company has a very strong AA ERG that provides good cohesive and critically important feedback to the company about issues that impact the AA employees. Every time the company asks for feedback, they get single clear input, and the community thrives.

But our community works differently. For example, at this certain other company, 3 or 4 Hispanics get together and decide to create the Hispanic Leadership Team, a Hispanic ERG to address issues of importance to Hispanic employees at the company. The Hispanics at the plant hear about and immediately create the Mexican Leadership Team, an ERG to address issues of importance to Mexican American employees. The Hispanics in the sales force across the nation hear about it and immediate create the Puerto Rican Leadership Team, an ERG to address the needs of Puerto Rican employees. And at the satellite offices they hear about it and they create the Venezuelan Leadership Team, and the Cuban Leadership team, and the Colombian Leadership Team, and so on. As a result, none of them have any critical mass or influence, and when the company ask these ERGs for input, they get 7 or 8 different and possibly contradictory input. They have fractured themselves into irrelevance.

The latest descriptor we are in love with these days is LatinX. Proponents of it say it is created to have a descriptor that is gender neutral. And that may be true, but so are the existing Hispanic and Latin descriptors! True, Latino and Latina are not, but we have Latin which serves the same need. Importantly, according to the Pew Research Center, only 20% of Hispanics know what LatinX means, and only 3% use the term. That leaves a huge 76% with no idea what the term is or how it is used. Additionally, La Real Academia de la Lengua Española, which decides what words belong to the Spanish language, rejected LatinX as a Spanish word. That is not to say it can’t be used in English since the English language doesn’t have an equivalent official body and relies on dictionary companies to add words when needed, but is confusing to the community. And yes, I know in a small microcosm like a college campus it may not be confusing since everyone there uses it, particularly with the younger population. But that is not representative of the 60+ million Hispanics in the country, and clearly unknown to the current generation of immigrants.

Critically important, if you think Hispanics are confused by the term, imagine Anglos. They already have difficulty with having Hispanic and Latin/Latino/Latina, now we are adding yet another descriptor, which once again fractures the community. And I haven’t addressed Latin@, Latins, Latin’, Chicano, Mexican American, Boricua, and a host of other versions of descriptors we love to use.

My concern is that the more we add different nomenclature and fracture ourselves, the more we find ways to describe ourselves different, the more we will confuse the majority in the country and reduce our influence and ability to support the community. When the government wants to talk about STEM amongst the Hispanic community, who they talk to? The Hispanics? The Latinxs? The Latinos? The Latins? Who?

Interestingly, someone told me once while talking this same point, “that’s a silly argument since they are all the same.” Well, if that is the case, if they are all the same, why do we keep creating new labels to define the same?

I know this point of view may not be popular, and I know as just one person I’m not going to change this emerging trend and further fracturing of the community any time soon. But I must make sure we understand the big picture impact of the things we do and the decisions we make.

We truly are in love with LatinX particularly amongst younger generations. But as a SHPE member, ask yourself what is more important, what’s more critical to you? Improving the community, adding more students to STEM, getting more professional Hispanics in the workforce and eventually in the C-suites across the nation, or is it to find ever more creative labels to describe ourselves? Is it more important to have the national presence and power that comes from the size of the community, or adding yet another descriptor to the list? I know my answer – do you know yours?

Miguel Alemañy
Chair, SHPE Board of Directors

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