An upperclassman told me about SHPE. I had felt really homesick and when he told me about how strong the Familia was I wanted to be part of something like that.

I'm in two committees. The first committee is the events planning committee where I help organize socials for the UCI chapter and the other is the SHPE Junior committee.

At SHPE National Convention, I love seeing different chapters and seeing SHPE Familia and how strong they are at other schools.

I want to be able to help people by making a medical devices while also just representing the Hispanic community.

As teaching assistant I had a few students who were in SHPE and they invited me to participate in a student panel about opportunities in graduate school.

Currently I am a visiting assistant professor of engineering at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. At Swarthmore I have the unique opportunity to educate engineering students within a liberal arts context.

SHPE has done a really good job the past few years of increasing Hispanic representation at the undergraduate level. The next step in my mind is academics and having professors that are also Hispanic.

Talk to as many people as you can, make as many connections as you can. You can’t have enough connections and I know networking is an overused word but it's true, you should do it.

I first got involved with SHPE as a student at the Colorado School of Mines but it just feels like I was always a part of SHPE. It's been my life since 1992. And in 2009 I became a Lifetime Member.

I was with IBM for 17 1/2 years straight out of college and I had many opportunities. I also ended up going back to school and pursuing my MBA.

To be in SHPE you just have to support our mission and vision to bring up our youth in an environment where they have an opportunity to learn STEM technologies and pass that on.

My advice would be: don't care too much about what other people think, step out of your comfort zone, get involved, and give back.

I got into college at the University of Texas El Paso. At first, I was really interested in biomedical engineering. Instead, I chose to do electrical engineering - I thought I would never be without a job.

Through one of my classes, my professor ended up introducing me to SHPE. I was able to get amazing mentors there who put me on the right path.

My advisor told me,'You are enough. You don't have to be better than everyone else, just be you.' And I feel like the moment she told me that, she took a lot of pressure off my shoulders and I just embraced who I was.

You don't have to be an officer to make an impact on SHPE. I have never been an officer and yet I feel like I've had so much impact on my chapter. It's just a matter of wanting to help others.