With my mane and my big earrings.
Investing to attract more Latinos to careers like computer science is incredibly important to me. (and reading the comments on the video in this post shows how we are swimming against the current). My career in tech hasn’t been easy, and I am convinced that if there were people who looked like me, spoke like me, and felt closer to me, things would be easier.
And these initiatives help with that, creating resources in Spanish and investing in Latinos, working with organizations by and for Latinos. Did you know that in the US, only 6% of the STEM workforce are Latinos? And as someone said today, if that’s scary…imagine how the numbers look for LATINAS.
If we can bring more Latinos into these careers that provide financial stability and are truly an opportunity to change the world, we are bringing our entire culture, what makes us unique, our particular way of thinking, and putting it at the disposal of fixing the problems of the only world we have.
No one can convince me that “One Hundred Years of Solitude” would not be the same if Gabo had not written it in Spanish, and that’s how Latin American literature was born, if we can learn to create technology without having to change our language, that’s how we’re going to change the world in ways that have not been imagined, that’s how we’re going to create distinctly Latin American technology. That’s how we stop being an “afterthought” and become leaders in solutions to our problems.
Diversity is important, it makes us resilient. But diversity has to be done right. I’ve heard so many times: “put on glasses”, “never wear a dress”, “take off your jewelry”…your life will be easier…but I have decided NO, I either do it with my messy hair, my big earrings and a skirt every now and then or I don’t do it at all. 💪💪💪 Because diversity is about attracting more different people who can bring new ideas, not about making them change to be like the majority.