Coming up in tech, I had the privilege of three Career Tias mentoring me. What exactly do I mean by a “Career Tia?” Well, if you’re Latina, you have your Tia (aunt) who tells dirty jokes at family gatherings; your Tia who lets you borrow her cool clothes; and your Tia who helps you build a career. In my case, all three of my Career Tias were not related to me; I met them all while trying to navigate my path out of school and into the work world.
Building a network of mentors today is different, and perhaps easier, than it was thirty years ago, when I was a senior in high school. Back then, in 1993 (yikes!), I never heard of an internship. I did not know the white kids in my school were working part-time at their parents’ law offices.
Even though I went to my high school counselor for help finding part-time work, the best placement he or she (can’t even remember!) could find for me was Wendy’s. Regardless of my AP Calculus and AP Physics classes showing that my brain was extremely active and more capable than toasting buns, that’s what I did for two weeks before quitting, and wondering WTF — I need to figure out where I’m headed after high school.
The Typical Latinx Family Network
My parents’ network was family. None of them had gone to college, and none of them were working in math or science fields. My older sister was the only person in my family that I knew in college, and she was floundering around, not knowing how to navigate, trying to figure out everything on her own. I’m sure if she’d had a Career Tia mentoring her along her journey, she would have reached her destination much quicker as a math teacher! My boy cousin of the same age, because that’s just what was expected by our Puerto Rican parents. No one helped my parents, they reasoned, so how could they help us, especially with college, when they never attended themselves?
Apply for Everything
So I just applied for whatever random colleges sent me brochures in the mail. I guess when you take SATs (fact check this), your mailing address ends up on their lists, so I was fortunate enough to receive mail from a liberal arts Christian college that was offering scholarships to anyone with at least a 1200 SAT score and a 3.5 GPA. Boom. I was in.
Being a girl
While being a girl has changed drastically from my mom’s Baby Boomer Generation to my Gen X to my Sobrina’s Gen Z, being a girl — Latina, in my case — in college is a whole…thing. At my particular school, because it was religious, the girls at my school were 1950s style from my perspective because they were more interested in earning an “Mrs.” than an actual degree. After two years of absorbing as much as I could, including a study abroad semester in London, I transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill where I was convinced I would find more people to help me become more than someone’s wife.
Keep your eyes on the bulletin boards
There is all this advice now in the 21st century to “know your interests” but the problem with being young is that you don’t really know your interests cuz you’ve only been alive for a minute. Even though I had dabbled in everything from Girl Scouts to marching band to swimming to writing for the school newspaper, to learning French (instead of Spanish, haha) I wandered around the UNC-CH campus for a year not knowing what I didn’t know, and most of all I did not know how to ask for help.
I only knew to search bulletin boards for this or that opportunity because I was running out of money. And Boom. There was a flyer for Hispanics (that’s what they called us back then) to apply for a scholarship from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, so with nothing left to lose, I applied. It’s a good thing I got that scholarship because it connected me to my first of my Career Tias: Lavonne Luquis, a Puerto Rican media entrepreneur who had founded Latino.com at a women’s tech incubator in San Francisco. After hiring me, she observed my interest in the tech side of the business, so she promoted me. When the startup folded, she continued referring me for other jobs and eventually coached me while I raised money on Kickstarter for The Femmebots animated series.
I met the second of my Career Tias after applying for a job in DC and getting hired by Maria Ibañez, another media professional who also supported my talents in coding and fixing broken Drupal platforms. After she left the organization, she stayed in touch and always provided references for any future jobs I applied for, and eventually she rehired me to work for another nonprofit in DC, namely UrbanAlliance.org, which ironically provides mentoring and paid internships for high school students.
Hazel Henderson, my third Career Tia, wasn’t Hispanic, but her assistant Rosalinda Sanquiche is Puerto Rican. They both took me under their wings, introduced me to their entire network of socially responsible investors, and got me into rooms of one-percenters my blood Tias could only dream about.
And now I am one of the Career Tias Mentoring Latinas in Tech
This week I’ll have my first session with Career Tias mentoring a Latina in Tech. I found her through LatinasinTech.org after signing up for the mentoring program.
