Stories from Latinas in Engineering with KeepTruckin

#FiercelyLatina
Stories from
Latinas in
Engineering

#FiercelyLatina
Event Agenda
4:00 PM Welcome + Intros
4:20 PM Breakout Room #1
4:30 PM Lightning Talks — Miriam & Nyah
5:00 PM Lightning Talks — Denise & Valerie
5:30 PM Lightning Talk — Patricia & Karina
5:50 PM Group Reflection & Photo
5:55 PM Raffle Prizes & Closing Words
6:00 PM Event Wraps Up
Take a selfie &
use the hashtag
and we’ll
retweet 🤳🏽

#FiercelyLatina
Take a selﬁe of yourself at the event, tag any
of our accounts and Techqueria will retweet!
Event Hashtag & Photos
@Techqueria
@TechqueriaOrg
@KeepTruckinHQ

#FiercelyLatina
Recording Notice
This event is being recorded.
By continuing to be in this event, you and
other participants are consenting to be
recorded.
We will be livestreaming the event to
Techqueria’s YouTube Channel

2015
Meetup group launched, 3 people at ﬁrst meetingHISTORY
IN BRIEF
2017
Expanded to Los Angeles, New York City & Austin
2020
10,000+ members with multiple chapters across US
2019
Incorporated as a 501c3 nonproﬁt
2018
Revamped website and branding
2016
Slack online community launched

MISSION
To provide Latinx professionals with the resources
and support that they need to thrive and become
leaders in the tech industry.
VISION
To become the most powerful and robust
professional network of Latinx professionals in the
tech industry across the world

CHAPTERS
members from across
the world with multiple
active chapters
10,000+
events held across all
chapters since 2016
125+
are weekly active users
in our Slack community
25%
San Francisco Bay Area
Los Angeles, CA
Austin, TX
Miami,
FL*
New York, NY
Orlando, FL*
Portland, OR*
Washington, DC
Atlanta, GA
Boston,
MA*
*Still in trial period
Philadelphia, PA*
Orange County, CA*
Chicago, IL*

2020 ROADMAP — LAUNCHED
APRIL 2020
COVID-19 FUND
We raised over $50,000 in about 2 weeks to help support over 120 undocumented
individuals and/or families during this unprecedented period of time.
JANUARY 2020
EVENTS PLATFORM
Chapters and events consolidated all in one place with advanced analytics, automated
emails, form data collection available to our leads.
JUNE 2020
PODCAST
Partnered with Points Presence Media to feature in-depth narrative stories, interviews
and business advice about and from the perspective of the Latinx in tech community.

ROADMAP — UPCOMING
EARLY 2021
MENTORSHIP PROGRAM
Sponsor peer learning circles based on career path
(engineering, management, founders, etc)
LATE 2020
JOB BOARD
Post opportunities to our job board and get access to a
resume bank of members who are job searching
LATE 2021
CASA CONFERENCE
Support the largest gathering of mid to senior level Latinx
professionals in tech within the US

Upcoming
Techqueria
Events
Find out more at
events.techqueria.org and
become a member to get
notiﬁed of the latest updates!

A big thank you to
our event leads
from Techqueria!

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Our Commitment to
Diversity, Equity, and
Inclusion
At KeepTruckin, we embrace diversity. Diversity drives
innovation and improves an organization’s ability to adapt
to rapid change. To create a diverse environment we must
identify our unconscious biases and make an eﬀort to
overcome them. In line with our core values of seeking
improvement and creating trust with one another, we
insist on equity and inclusion of our teammates and
ensuring all voices are heard.

Integrate
Drive a diverse, inclusive,
equitable, and empowered
environment for our
employees.
Accelerate
Partner with external
communities and
organizations for best
practices and
recruitment.
Connect
Integrate diversity and
inclusion into all
business practices.

Accelerate: Opportunities for Our Employees
Employee Resource Groups
InterseKT Roundtable Discussions
Mentorship Meet-ups
01
Employee Highlights in external
publications
Social media communications
Speaking opportunities
Internal Leadership Panels and
Fireside Chats
Amplify the voices and stories of our
employees externally and internally.
Create spaces for underrepresented
employees to connect, collaborate, and
develop their careers.
Training
Managers
Business Case for D&I
Inclusive Leader 101
Unconscious Bias
Teams
Creating Inclusive Environments
Identity Exploration Activities
02 03

Integrate
■ Regular demographics data and insights review
business leaders.
■ Weave diversity and inclusion best practices into all
employee, product, customer and vendor
programs.
■ Get feedback on our products and marketing from
our diverse workforce.

Connect
Connect with the communities in which we work
to drive an inclusive employer brand, use best
practices, and recruit diverse talent.
Connect with the communities in which we work
to drive an inclusive employer brand, use best
practices, and recruit diverse talent.

#FiercelyLatina
A big thank you to
our event leads
from KeepTruckin!
KeepTruckin is hiring!
View open roles at
keeptruckin.com/careers
KeepTruckin @KeepTruckinHQ KeepTruckin

#FiercelyLatina
Accept to join the Zoom
breakout rooms
Event Guidelines
Turn on your video
in Zoom but mute
yourself unless
you’re talking
Follow
Techqueria’s
Code of Conduct
for Events
��

#FiercelyLatina
Code of Conduct - Acceptable Behavior
● Using welcoming and inclusive language
● Being respectful of diﬀering viewpoints and
experiences
● Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
● Referring to people by their preferred pronouns and
using gender-neutral pronouns when uncertain
��

#FiercelyLatina
Code of Conduct - Unacceptable Behavior
● Oﬀensive comments related to a person’s identity
● Other conduct which you know could reasonably be considered
inappropriate in a professional setting
● Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or
electronic address, without explicit permission
● Spamming the group and excessive self-promotion
● Sustained disruption of event programming
● The usage of sexualised language or imagery and unwelcome
sexual attention or advances
● Threats of violence
● Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, public or private
harassment
● Unwelcome physical contact
● Unwelcome remarks regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and
practices
● Unwelcome sexual attention
● Any action that results in complaints from our community
● Assuming or promoting any kind of inequality including but not
limited to: age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and
expression, nationality and race, personal appearance, religion,
or sexual identity and orientation
● Attacking personal tastes
● Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
● Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity
● Deliberate intimidation
● Demonstrating the graphics or any other content you know may
be considered disturbing
● Exclusionary jokes or comments
● Finding loopholes in the code of conduct
● Incitement of violence towards any individual, including
encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in
self-harm
● Not being respectful to reasonable communication boundaries,
such as ‘leave me alone,’ ‘go away,’ or ‘I’m not discussing this with
you.’

#FiercelyLatina
Breakout Rooms in Zoom
● Make sure to join the breakout rooms when prompted.
● Each breakout room will last 10 minutes and will have
dedicated prompts to help facilitate the discussion!
● Folks who are on livestream can’t do break out rooms

#FiercelyLatina
RAFFLE PRIZES
We will be giving away
raﬄe prizes at the end of
the event. You have to be
present though. 😉
🎉
🎲
🎁

#FiercelyLatina
Vota tee
from
Jane Zeano Designs
Latina Power tee
from
Jane Zeano DesignsLuchona y Chingona
from
Jane Zeano Designs

#FiercelyLatina
Valerie Aguilar
Software Engineer
Keeptruckin
Karina Martinez
Software Engineer
Snap Inc.
Miriam Aguirre
CTO
Skillz
Nyah Zarate
CEO
Continuous Solutions
Patricia Perozo
Software Engineer
Pinterest
Speakers
Denise Videtta
Senior Engineering Manager
Scoop

#FiercelyLatina
Breakout Room #1 — 5-6 People — 10 Min
● Name
● Gender Pronouns
● Nationality/Country of Origin
● Role
● Company
● What do you hope to get out of this event?
● What was one of your biggest learning moments when you ﬁrst started
your career or career search?
● What do you pretend to hate but actually love?
Take a
screenshot!
📸

#FiercelyLatina
● Born in Mexico
● Moved to LA at an early age
● Felt connection with math
● College never seemed like an option
● Inspired by A.P. History teacher to pursue higher education
● Attended MIT
● Initially interested in aerospace engineering
● Took ﬁrst coding class
● Graduated with B.S. in computer science
● Worked in ﬁnancial technology as software engineer

#FiercelyLatina
● The fastest growing private company in America (2017 Inc. 5000)
● Forbes Next Billion-dollar Startups (2018)
● Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies (2018)
● CNBC Disruptor 50 (2017, 2019)
● Inc. Private Titan (2020)
● 250+ Employees
● 20,000+ Game Developer Partners
● 30 Million+ Player Network
● 1 Billion+ Tournaments Each Year

#FiercelyLatina
SVP of
Engineering
Oversee
product &
engineering
departments
Recruiting &
operations to
meet business
needs
Launched core
product during
1st year
Build and
enhance Skillz
platform
CTO

#FiercelyLatina
● Expensive education
● Disparity in men vs. women
● Lack of intersectionality

#FiercelyLatina
● Make some friends
● Work on projects you are passionate about
● Learn to love failure

#FiercelyLatina
● How to ﬁnd your support system
● Surround yourself with people who challenge you
● Mentor others
● Reciprocation

#FiercelyLatina
● Love games, open source software, and civic type
projects!
● Passionate about the products at Skillz and making
a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce
● Creates value in your work/life
● Makes it easy to come into work every day

#FiercelyLatina
● Plan for it, push yourself, and take calculated risks
● Failure doesn’t have to be negative
● Understand what you need to learn
● Don’t be afraid to ask for help
● Believe in yourself

#FiercelyLatina
● Show up everyday
● Working with diﬀerent organizations to move the needle:
○ Technovation
○ The Alumni Society
○ Techqueria
○ Girl Geek X
○ Lesbians Who Tech
● Founded and leading our ﬁrst ERG – Women in Tech
● Robust Hiring Practices
● Parity Pledge

#FiercelyLatina
My Life,
My Story.
I did not choose science.
Science chose me.

#FiercelyLatina
My Life,
My Story.
Step 1: Gratitude
How do I appreciate the people, experiences in my life?
What can bring me closer to fulﬁllment with what I have?
Step 2: Awareness
What are my obstacles?
How will I overcome these?
Step 3: Self-Reﬂection
How can I be as constructive as possible?
What can I do to serve & help others?
How can I do what I love, love what I do?
How you bring your authentic self to work in a
world not built for you?
Practice gratitude, awareness and self reflection, do it with
love and do it often.

#FiercelyLatina
My Life,
My Story.
Being Latina in Engineering taught me:
● No matter how strong the sense is of unbelonging externally, you
can ﬁnd within you a place of comfort internally
● Take nothing for granted and enjoy the lessons along the way
● Observe, evaluate, communicate, choose and act.
● Build resilience to remove oneself out of the cycle of violence
which are the legacies of racism, sexism and religious intolerance
● Give back and do it generously.

#FiercelyLatina
My Life,
My Story. Paying it forward:
● Mentoring with latinx community in
business
● Non-proﬁt in Nicaragua
● Guest lectures at south american
universities,
● Founded Latinx leadership lunch (every
quarter)
Communities & Individuals who helped me
grow:
● Purdue Professors
● John Schultz & Teri Ruch
● Family & Friends
● Every single person who challenged and
supported me along the way
● Latino Business Action Network at
Stanford

#FiercelyLatina
My Life,
My Story.
Advice to pass for next generation of Latinas in
Tech:
● Believe in yourself first, the rest second
● Live with the uncertainty in life
● Research is a never-ending process, there
is no beginning and end to knowledge
● If you’re smart, you only need to be in the
right place at the right time. Grit gets you at
that place and time more than once.

#FiercelyLatina
● Name
● Gender Pronouns
● Role
● Company
● What was your “ﬁrst of x” career experience?
● How did you get into tech?
● What is a show you’ve been enjoying recently?
Take a
screenshot!
📸

#FiercelyLatina
This is me
Originally from Venezuela
Woman in tech, mom, engineer,
wife and latina
I like baking, zumba and
going to the beach

#FiercelyLatina
My entry to Tech
Direct and simple
Followed what I loved doing
Went to Universidad Simon Bolivar
Majored in Computer Science
There were few women in my class

#FiercelyLatina
Leaving Venezuela
Moved to US - Texas
Learned English
Did my masters in Software Engineering

#FiercelyLatina
From Texas to California
Joined Guidewire in 2012
Joined Scoop in 2019
Moved from IC to Manager

#FiercelyLatina
The only Latina
Only Latina in the engineering team
Exposure to a new range of activities
Guest keynote speaker in Las Vegas

#FiercelyLatina
Challenges
Not everyone is nice
There is unconscious bias
Do not keep it to yourself, ﬁnd your allies

#FiercelyLatina
What worked for me
Be yourself, embrace your culture
Have a support system
Let go to grow to a better you

#FiercelyLatina
Why does it matter to me?
I want to change the ratio
I don’t want to be one of
the few women in the room
I want to be a role model
for my daughter

#FiercelyLatina
It all started with green chile...
❖ 3rd generation Mexican-American
❖ Born and raised in New Mexico
❖ High School - Intro to Programming
❖ Studied MIS at Texas Tech University

#FiercelyLatina
Adiós, Tejas 👋🏽
❖ Held 2 diﬀerent jobs in TX - promoted to Senior SWE
❖ Silicon Valley or bust!
❖ Interviews are no joke...back to the basics
❖ First full-time job in the Bay
❖ KeepTruckin saves the day

#FiercelyLatina
Aha moments 💡
❖ It isn’t about luck, it’s about hard work (oh hey, imposter syndrome!)
❖ Leverage your network and allies
❖ Learning to have a career and not just a job
❖ Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
❖ Find and use your voice ~ 2% of employed engineers in the US are Latina

#FiercelyLatina
● Name
● Gender Pronouns
● Role
● Company
● If you could pick up a new skill in an instant what would it be?
● What is one thing you are the ﬁrst of in your family/community?
● Who’s someone you really admire?
Take a
screenshot!
📸

#FiercelyLatina
linkedin.com/in/patricia-perozo-ba08a49a/

#FiercelyLatina
My story is one where I did everything by the book ….
… but still couldn’t see myself becoming a senior
engineer until now.

#FiercelyLatina
I think there are two types of engineers - those
who like to solve people problems with tech and
those who like to solve technical problems with
tech. I am the former.

#FiercelyLatina
A little bit about me
● Born in Caracas
● My family moved to Virginia when I was one
● Grew up in Chicago
● I love to dream about the future

#FiercelyLatina
A little bit about me
● Lucky enough to have CS in HS where I
discovered that this was what I wanted to do.
● Majored in CS at Stanford
● Interned at Facebook and a civic tech startup
called Brigade
● Interested in becoming a PM

#FiercelyLatina
Brigade
● Supported by numerous mentors
● Fostered my development
● Gender diversity on a backend team
● Still couldn’t see myself becoming a senior
engineer

#FiercelyLatina
Pinterest
● Got acquired by Pinterest
● Felt very isolated when I first joined
● Impostor syndrome went off the charts
● Eventually got the offer to be a PM
● Turned it down

#FiercelyLatina
What Changed
● Saw an example of a TL I could see myself in
● Asked myself what makes a good PM?
● What moments did I appreciate my PM most?
● What skills am I looking to use in my day to
day?

#FiercelyLatina
Looking Forward
● A ton of really diﬃcult problems to solve in trust
and safety.
● Moving into civic/gov tech and helping to build
better systems for things like medicaid/medicare
and unemployment
● Become a TL

#FiercelyLatina
Advice
● Notice the parts of your workday that bring you joy and
try to ﬁnd a career where you spend most of your time
on that.
● There is no magic cure to imposter syndrome no job,
title, or educational background that will “ﬁx” it.
● For me the things that helped were celebrating the little
wins and now awareness of the less obvious
repercussions of it.

#FiercelyLatina
Gratitude
● Family
● NCWIT - (National Center for Women in Information Technology)
● Baker Franke
● CODE2040
● SOLE
● Brigade

#FiercelyLatina
About Me
● Originally from Southern California - born and
raised in the IE
● Grew up with a natural aptitude towards math
and science
● I liked chemistry and calculus, porque no los dos?

#FiercelyLatina
I was in chemical engineering
but now I’m in software, what
happened?
● Discovered my love for programming from Matlab.
● Took CS for “fun” then decided to drop everything to
pursue a degree in CS
● Undergrad struggle due to my socio-economic status,
institutional barriers, political tensions, and
microagressions

#FiercelyLatina
Paying it forward!
● The role of mentors, friends, and community in my life
has allowed me to flourish in this field.
● Worked for a nonprofit (SMASH) teaching CS to
underrepresented high school students in the Bay
area - lets talk about GROWTH!

#FiercelyLatina
The story of Snapchat - expect
the unexpected
● Scholarship to go to Grace Hopper this past October.
● Met Evi who is now co-lead of the Latinx ERG @ Snap!!
● LA (check) culture (check) mission (check)

#FiercelyLatina
What I have learned:
● Be your own role model
● Seek out mentors and community
● Set intentions, learn as much as you can, and pursue
your passion!

#FiercelyLatina
Who are you?
Who do you aspire to be?
How are you currently working
towards those goals?

#FiercelyLatina
Group Photo 📷

#FiercelyLatina
Group Reﬂections 📚

#FiercelyLatina
Raffle Prizes 🎁

#FiercelyLatina
Vota tee
from
Jen Zeano Designs
Latina Power tee
from
Jen Zeano DesignsLuchona y Chingona
throw pillow
from
Jen Zeano Designs

Check out our upcoming events at
events.techqueria.org
If you have any questions, comments or
concerns related to the event, feel free to
email us at support@techqueria.org or
let us know in the Slack channel #meta.
THANKS!

Stories from Latinas in Engineering with KeepTruckin

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