PREFACE
FROM IMPERIAL VALLEY TO THE SILICON VALLEY
My parents' journey started on an adverse path from Mexico to the Imperial Valley of California, in the 1960s during the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexicans to work on their journey toward American citizenship. The youngest of five children, I was born in El Centro, California, on June 19, 1969. My mother shared with me that she worked “like a burro” up until her third trimester, spending 10 to 12 hours a day in the fields. Sometimes she worked in the blistering heat of 110 degrees, often feeling like she wasn't going to make it. Pure determination pushed my mother through these conditions. My father also worked these long hours; however, he was treated with more fairness as a male migrant worker at the time. My parents simply taught us about a good work ethic, but more importantly to take that hard work into the classroom. My father knew how to communicate his thoughts and express his frustration with my mother working these long hours and having to begin work again only a few days after I was born.
My dad at that point began to realize the importance of being a father, a man of the household. We did not have much of a house with seven of us in a one‐bedroom home in El Centro, California.
After I was two years old, my father had the ambition to move us to the Santa Clara Valley, today known as the Silicon Valley. In 1973 my parents were fortunate to find positions in canneries, which was an industry that was considered better than working in the fields.
However, my parents could afford to live in only one place: an area known as Meadowfair, which was based in East San José, California, and known as a barrio (Spanish‐speaking neighborhood).
This was a great success for my father because we moved into a four‐bedroom home. Everything my parents needed was within a two‐mile radius, such as the well‐known Mexican shopping center known as Tropicana, which had everything from clothes to food.
From a bird's‐eye view, in the early 1970s the Silicon Valley resembled a salad bowl. About three miles east from my childhood home were orchards for picking seasonal fruit. However, to the west and north of my neighborhood the Silicon Valley companies, such as Apple, were beginning to take shape.
I didn't learn English until the second grade. Being integrated into a mainstream school, I realized at a young age that we were at a disadvantage compared with the kids who were White and Asian and who lived in the middle‐class neighborhoods known as Evergreen and Creekside. Many of the White kids were from families of the Mormon faith, and their parents worked in the electronics industry. This neighborhood was about three miles from my neighborhood. They appeared to have everything we did not in terms of connectivity to the school, and the inequity was realized early on. However, what we had in my home was an unconditional love that felt so warm and reassuring. For example, my father was determined to instill confidence in me and protect me from any negative influences.
My working life started when I was eight years old, just about to turn nine.
Every summer, my parents showed my four siblings and me the value of the work ethic by taking us to pick cherries, apricots, and at times strawberries in the Silicon Valley. The most difficult part was waking up between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. and getting ready to head out for another very long day of manual labor. I remember splashing water on my face to wake up, since I was too young to drink coffee. Without a word of complaint or rebellion, all five of us would pack into our father's 1978 pink Datsun, with silver flames along the side, We didn't bother with seat belts, but I felt safe, because I was with my parents and siblings. This job taught me early on to be respectful of migrant workers, as I was a migrant student. But as a young, curious student I vividly remember gazing out of the side window as we drove to Cupertino to pick some cherries and see some of the neighborhoods surrounding early Silicon Valley companies like Apple, which was based out of the garage of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as they were about to embark on creating a company that would not only change Silicon Valley, but the world.
My early childhood life centered on staying out of trouble, because my father wanted me to keep busy. When I was just 12 years old, in the summers I went with my father to clean offices, a job that he worked part‐time for a janitorial company in addition to working full‐time at a cannery. I know that my father's intent was to keep me busy on weekends and during the summers, working in the fields to keep me away from some of the kids who had joined a gang in the barrio. I believe his motive was to make me realize the significance of an education. He didn't want me to work as hard as he had to; he wanted me to work smarter. During that era in the Silicon Valley the industry was electronics and the product was known as a circuit board, and as first‐generation Americans we had never been exposed to this language or concept.
On the weekends when I worked with my father as a janitor, throughout the Silicon Valley and the Venture Capital Mecca of Sand Hill Road, I spent many hours daydreaming. I recall what I was thinking I cleaned the office of the CEO of a successful tortilla company. I was slowly pushing the vacuum cleaner as I admired everything in the office, from the rich smell of mahogany to the awards of recognition he received as an outstanding Latino. I also enjoyed looking at his awards hanging on the wall and the ticket stubs from the first Super Bowl they played in the Silver Dome, which were carefully displayed in a case. My father walked in and interrupted my reverie, shouting “Hijo, this is the reason you need to concentrate in school and concentrate on going to college!”
My story, along with those of Dr. José Morey and all great Latino and Latina interviewees, is intended to change the narrative and show how our Latinx Business Success will enable a transformation into recruiting more Latinas in leadership positions in corporate America, from C‐suite level to boardrooms, from creating a business idea to receiving venture capital funding to executing a business to becoming a successful entrepreneur, in roles ranging from healthcare to technology leaders.
Also, in the areas of media and arts, we show how it is just as important for these industries to have representation in the top Silicon Valley firms in the country.
We also wish to encourage key leadership roles from academia to nonprofits to rising stars, to show Generation Z Latinas and Latinos that anything is possible. To make these roles transparent and accessible we will be sharing the tremendous success stories.
The book also focuses on the evolution of digital Latino intelligence, but to get to these solutions, the stories all have a common thread of the gaps and the digital divide, and explain that the solution is an increasing number of Latino and Latinas participating in the transformation of understanding their significance to technology and how to not only be part of the Silicon Valley and beyond, but to take ownership of the Latino future to follow.
This is our time – Es Tiempo – it's time to get a piece of that Silicon Valley pie.
—Frank Carbajal
San Francisco, California
September 2021
FROM BORINQUEN TO THE BOARDROOM
I was born in Puerto Rico in the early 1980s and grew up in a barrio called El Verde (The Greene) in Caguas. We were a traditional Puerto Rican family. My grandmother was the youngest of nine siblings and had studied nursing; my grandfather spent his entire career as a card dealer at the famous Caribe Hilton in Old San Juan, where he spent 36 years or, as he used to say, “Till the age of Christ,” dealing cards to international tourists coming to visit the Island of Enchantment.
My father was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic raised in a small town called Higuey and my mother was a beautiful, strong woman from the island. They met at the University of Puerto Rico and soon started a family. My father finished his studies while my mother both studied and worked from home to tend to the family.
Our family was a typical low‐ to middle‐income family on the island. My grandparents were of more modest means. Although we didn't have all the lavish trappings that others may have had, I never noticed, for we were wealthy in love, in passion, and in aspirations of what life could be.
It was my upbringing in el barrio that prepared me for the boardroom today. It was my island upbringing that taught me that family goes beyond the boundaries of blood, and the ideal that the growth and prosperity of community far outweighs that of capital. In short, the things that center me as Hispanic from El Caribe are very much the strengths that I bring to the teams and projects I have had the honor to work alongside.
I remember my grandmother, Amelia Tirado de Lasa, always thinking of others. Despite not having much of her own, she always had much to give. She instilled in us the mentality that if one can eat, then all can eat. I remember her always planning and purchasing potential gifts for people in need even before the person arrived at our home. From my grandfather, Victor Lasa, I learned that it is more important to give than to receive. From an early age we would talk about my future as a physician. Abuelo would always say, “José por cada dolar que ganes en una clinica, estes seguro que hagas tres clinicas para regalarlo.”
From my father, Juan Manuel Morey, I learned the importance of soft skills. My father always had the amazing gift of understanding a room instantly. Like a live chess game, he could analyze not just the pieces on the board, but what their strengths were and how the game needed to play out for the greatest opportunity of success. His people skills are something I have always admired. I have never met a person that my father could not instinctively read. He was careful to evaluate nuances and interpersonal idiosyncrasies, a skill that served him well throughout his years in management at Honeywell. Dad understood the importance of finding allies in your journey. As the African adage states, “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”
My mother, Carmen Ivonne Morey Lasa, was the heart, soul, and glue of our core family. Like many Hispanic families, our mothers are the foundation on which our life and societies stand. They are our refuge in the storm, strength for the journey ahead, and our ever‐present help in times of trouble. My mother was no different. She has been and will always be that and so much more. She was also the person from whom I learned most about creativity and to continually reinvent oneself. Her entrepreneurial pursuits led her to nunca parar de aprender. She studied art, linguistics, and design and she always endeavored to pursue her passions. Above all, she held the fierce belief that she, her children, and her children's children could aspire to anything they set their mind on. She never wavered when storms rose and never faltered when the journey seemed arduous.
My mother was always what I call a “no box” type of thinker. She never saw the problem from outside of the box; she would never define it as a box to begin with, for that was too limiting. This is a lesson that I learned well and has brought me from being a child born on the Isle of Enchantment to a leader on Silicon Island. Attention to detail and presentation was another amazing art that my mother taught me over the years. She was very much the embodiment of not dressing for the role you had, but for the role you wish to attain.
Despite the amazing support I have had from strong Hispanic women and men in my life, it has not always been a life of ease. I have most certainly been blessed, of that there is no doubt. But my journey has been wrought with more failures than success, more losses than wins. I have experienced racism in many forms. At times it would be blatant and raw, such as a pejorative slur or racial epithet. Other times it would be more subtle and nefarious, such as being passed over for a leadership role or becoming aware of income inequality. Both have been challenges but the latter is oftentimes more grating, due to the information coming with a smile from someone who was either ignorant to their own bias or too biased to their own ignorance. The sad reality of both experiences, however, is that they don't stop when you leave the barrio and enter the boardroom and, in some instances, they worsen.
Despite many failures and missteps, I have always carried with me the teachings of my youth. Like manna from heaven, they have been an ever‐present sustenance in times of wandering. The timeless echoes of my parents and my grandparents' teachings have allowed me to live out the words of Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” It has been El Barrio that has led me to the boardroom. It has been the lessons from the Island of Enchantment that have led me to Silicon Island, and I truly believe all Latinos can do so as well, together.
For with great hardship comes great opportunity. I believe Latinos from all stripes, creeds, and countries have the potential to unleash an economic and educational renaissance throughout the world unlike any time in human history if we focus on the future – and that future is STEM.
I believe there is not only a need but an opportunity for Latinos to transform themselves into the future powerhouse of STEM jobs by focusing on education at all levels and harnessing the budding tech industry developing across the world.
Systemic inequality has been a barrier to the boardroom for far too many and the tinder of racisms has left many careers smoldering throughout history. But from the ashes of calamity, there is an opportunity to reinvent oneself for the future of all if we leverage developing projects and focus on future economies through STEM education and entrepreneurship. And from the ashes, a new day will emerge. A day of promise. A day of hope. A day in the future when we will all live in one barrio on a Silicon Island for all.
In this book Frank and I will discuss with Latino leaders from the pinnacles of industries what diversity and inclusion look like. We will discuss the milestones that must be achieved to reach a truly diverse and equitable society. We will remind Latinos from all walks of life that it is their inherent talent and skills that add value to enterprise and is the power that will continue to drive the engine of innovation.
We will provide the framework for corporations, governments, and individuals to build a more inclusive future in every industry by leveraging Hispanic ingenuity, skill, and innovation for a better future for all. We will show Latinos how to take that road less traveled and how that will make all the difference.
—José Morey
Caguas, Puerto Rico
September 2021