Every couple of months, we have a chance to step back from the daily grind and reflect on the year’s accomplishments.
As we wrap up some big projects and start others with our amazing clients, we find ourselves in the middle of the Hispanic Heritage Month. So we want to focus this reflection on the work and activities we are involved in with the Hispanic community, which we proudly belong to and represent.
Here are the highlights from our activities with the Hispanic community on the business and technology space, with special mentions to exceptional Latinos who are making a difference and real impact on their organizations and the world:
Founded in 2010 and led by Ana Valdez as Executive President, co-founders Henry Cisneros and Sol Trujillo, the Latino Donor Collaborative works to reframe and advance an accurate perception, portrayal, and understanding of the crucial contributions Latinos make to American society. We worked closely with Jessica Lynn Medrano and her team on redesigning and modernizing their website. The new website allows the organization to update content easily, the new interface fluidly adapts to mobile devices, and it has improved discoverability features for search engines.
Over the last three years, we have been involved in the Roku Developer community, participating in their annual Developer Summit in Los Gatos, CA, which focused on their latest and greatest technological advances and developer tools.
In May, we flew to Mexico City with Sebastian Arciniegas (Senior Partner Manager at Roku) to lead a workshop for local developers, co-organized with and hosted by Platzi, LATAM’s top online education startup. The team in charge of Roku’s LATAM expansion is doing a great job and recently launched multiple new channels and new devices to big markets like Mexico and Brazil. Kudos to Sebastian, Adriana Naves, and Gretel Perera for their outstanding work bringing Roku to these new markets.
We kicked off the year, advising two well-renowned media and entertainment leaders Beatriz Acevedo and Ivette Rodriguez, on digital strategy topics that led to the launch of the LACollab.
Supported by the Office of LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, this organization is a collective group of entertainment industry leaders, professionals, and allies, that seeks to develop transformational collaboration between the creative community, studios, buyers, and other organizations towards the goal of doubling Latino representation in Hollywood by 2030. We are the lead technical advisor for their most important technology project, a “first-of-its-kind Database of Latino Working Talent in Hollywood,” which will be a master tool for LA Collab’s success.
Last year we had a great opportunity and the honor of being part of the Cohort 7 of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative Education-Scaling (SLEI-Ed) Program from the Latino Business Action Network (LBAN). The SLEI-Ed program is an immersive seven-week program providing participants with valuable scaling frameworks, a diversified network of capital providers, business mentorship, and a deep understanding of mobilizing resources to expand their ventures and create sustainable growth.
LBAN was founded in 2012 by Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor, Emeritus, Jerry I. Porras, and a group of Latino MBA Alumni focused on working to make America stronger by empowering Latino entrepreneurs to grow large businesses through entrepreneurship research, education, and networking.
Through the program, we met outstanding Latinos like Mark Madrid, Jennifer García, and Elian Savodivker from the LBAN leadership team. They have become active members of their network, engaging in their events and collaboration opportunities with alumni and members.
In April, our Senior Product Designer and Associate Partner, Claudia Bardales, was invited to the “Women in Tech: Latina Communities” event to share her insights and experience as a woman working in technology.
The event focused on how women can transform communities and the world when they get equal access to education, especially STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
Claudia participated in a panel titled “Tech Education for all women: BrainFounding” where they discussed the influence women can have on the younger generations by studying and growing in technology professions and the importance of mentorship.
We are proud of being a company with more than 35% female representation across all roles. Through the Iconic Women initiative, we are always open to collaborating with communities to spread the message that women can have fulfilling and productive careers in technology.
In September our CTO and founder, Jorge Garcia’s participated at the Central American Donors Forum 2020 event.
We received the invitation since we were part of a group of companies and individuals who joined forces to donate 65,000 KN95 masks and $31,000 in PPE to Honduras healthcare workers during the COVID-19 crisis, an effort supported and made possible in part by a grant from the McNulty Foundation’s Global Response Fund, a partnership with the Aspen Global Leadership Network, which Jorge is a member of.
He was invited to share his insights and perspectives on the “Exercising Moral Courage for Equity & Resilience across Central America” panel session.
Last year we met Roberto Medrano, a bright and seasoned tech executive with whom we developed a great relationship as a mentor, to the point that at the start of 2020 we brought him in as a board member and official advisor. We have been working on the company’s growth and maturity strategy, especially on processes, sales, marketing, and business scaling.
Roberto is an executive in cybersecurity, AI, Blockchain, IoT, middleware, API security, microservices, DevOps, SaaS, cloud, SOA/API management & enterprise architecture. Roberto has been an executive at five public companies and in a board position of more than 10 that have been acquired. Roberto has been previously GM of HP Software, Top CMO, CEO Beach View, President of Finjan, and executive of Sun Microsystems. He has deep expertise in marketing, product management, product marketing, technology, alliances, channels, and sales. Here is an article recently published about him on one of his areas of expertise, Cyber Security.
As a company that started in Honduras and quickly expanded to international markets, we always look for opportunities to proudly represent our Hispanic community, opening opportunities for tech talent from LATAM to work with some of the most iconic brands and organizations in the world.
To learn more about the Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept 15 — Oct 15), you can go to https://hispanicheritagemonth.gov.
See some examples of the types of projects and ongoing clients we work with.
