Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

The surprise I had when I came to California…

When I arrived in Palo Alto for my internship, the first “assignment” I had was to go to a lecture that my boss was giving in Stanford. It was a lecture, which I have listened to many more times now, but that always “sticks” with me.

He showed statistics of the Latino presence in the Valley. Needless to say, the number is high –, especially for Latinos. For me that was normal, you can see that wherever you are. But then, he showed the statistics of the nationalities among the professionals in the Valley… 1% was Latino. That, to me, was a shock. How is it that we have so many of “us” here, but almost none in the professional environment?

That’s when I understood why my boss was so passionate about SV-Links (the company I work for). It’s difficult to be amongst other nationalities, such as Chinese and Indian, who have had to come so far and yet… Latin America is right next door! What is happening? What is the reason? At first, when I applied for the internship and heard about the company, I thought they were a consulting firm that showed executives the innovative world. But it’s so much more than that…

Last week, I had the opportunity to be part of one of the Immersion Programs that SV-Links offers. It’s a week-long event, where participants from all over Latin America visited various companies including HP and Google, had lectures from local entrepreneurs and startups, were introduced investment opportunities and got to feel the energy of this place. It was amazing to see how their thinking changed in such few days. Even I was inspired, and I’ve been here for a much longer time. But, enough marketing for the company…

The thing that stuck with me was the total amazement that the participants had. Top executives that had no idea what or how this world works. I had one of the participants say to me “Before Miguel (my boss) spoke to me, I didn’t even know what Silicon Valley was”. I could completely understand him, I felt the same way before coming here… and I go to the #1 Entrepreneurship school in the USA.

So what’s stopping us from exposing ourselves to this world? Fear? Comfortability? I think there isn’t one answer… but I think that we, as college students, can have the most impact in this transferability and expose people who can make an impact on the innovative and disruptive world.