Raquel Tamez shares the mission for SHPE, and it's about to get mindful

"When we at SHPE say 'We change lives,' we ABSOLUTELY change lives." In this week's You've Got This, while founder of healthynest Shazi Visram will be sharing her answers with us soon, in the meantime, we are thrilled to have CEO of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Raquel Tamez stop by to answer some questions leading to the SHPE 2020 Virtual Convention from October 26-31. Don't miss her answers below.

Victoria: "Can you tell us a bit about your professional journey?"

Raquel: "When I look at my career trajectory, it turns out that I’ve either been on a mission or a part of a mission. I knew early on as a little girl that I wanted to pursue higher education. My parents are immigrants and my dad was a migrant farmworker, and I grew up with lots of love, not necessarily lots of luxury, in the Barrio of Houston, Texas. I’m a lifelong learner, I love to learn, and because of my sense of justice early on, I decided to go to law school. And that was a good choice for me. I’ve been fortunate in my legal career, with ever-increasing scopes of responsibility and bigger teams at all different types of organizations. When I say that my career has been about mission, my first job as a lawyer was as a trial lawyer for the US Department of Labor, which was all about protecting employee and worker rights. Then I went in-house as Corporate Counsel for Mary Kay Cosmetics, responsible for 35 different subsidiaries internationally and helping empower women all over the world. Subsequently I moved into technology and managed global litigation for technology companies with ever-increasing responsibility, and I was a big advocate for women lawyers, Latina lawyers in particular. One thing led to another, and I found myself as the chief legal officer for a national nonprofit whose mission is all about the creation of employment opportunities for people with significant disabilities. When the opportunity to serve as the CEO of SHPE came along, I did all this research, and thought "What an amazing organization." They do exactly the things that helped me in my career — mentorship, scholarship, professional development, leadership development. And I thought "If I can bring all of my education and experience to this organization as the CEO I’ll give it a shot." I didn’t think I had a shot, because I’m a lawyer and this is an organization primarily for engineers and STEM professionals, but here I am three and a half years later. And making this career move is one of the best decisions of my life. I’m very proud of what my team and I have been able to accomplish in the three and a half years we've been with this organization that’s been around for 46 years. We’ve broken all kinds of records.

"While my career isn’t one straight line — there have been ups and downs, good, bad, ugly and disastrous — that’s what happens in life and careers. But luckily I’ve had good mentors, a personal board of directors, an inner circle of trusted advisors, and I have people in my life who have aspirations for me that I may not even have for myself. How cool is that?"

So I want to be that for others. I want to be that for SHPE members and people in my Hispanic community."

Victoria: "As the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers holds its 44th National Convention virtually next week, and with it also recently being National Hispanic Heritage Month, what would you want people to know more about the event?"

Raquel: "When you look at the convergence of all these various socioeconomic factors, the demand for STEM talent, and the fact that Hispanics are graduating high school in higher numbers, entering university and higher education in higher numbers, all of this really comes together. And the research, science and data shows that diversity and inclusion supports innovation, which is what organizations need now more than ever.

"As far as the convention, SHPE hosts the largest gathering of Hispanics in STEM, and that’s not going to change this year. In fact, we’re projecting our largest attendance in SHPE’s 46 year history — 10,000 people at our virtual convention."

It’s our first-ever virtual convention, and people who know us are very accustomed and love attending SHPE’s convention in-person, because it’s very familial. We live and breathe SHPE Familia. Everyone in our circle is embraced as part of the family. And that energy is pervasive throughout the convention. My team and I had been working 24/7 for a year to plan for this convention, so when we had to pivot several months ago from an in-person onsite in Denver to virtual, we were looking at ways to have that sense of Familia with positive energy, music, and fun, along with expert-led sessions and our fireside chats with executives, competitions with cash awards, and more.

We plan to have an enhanced experience for our members and attendees, with 11 days of virtual learning, which is more than the typical 4 days when we’re typically in-person and onsite. The career fair we have is the highlight of our convention, and this year we have 200 organizations that are recruiting, with jobs, internships, and full-time opportunities. Some of the best companies in the world — Facebook, Netflix, Google, Discover — will be hiring at our career fair. Several of these companies that I’ve listed are part of SHPE’s Industry Partnership Counsel — we are at 47 members for this fiscal year despite COVID-19 — engaging with us all year long, acting as our think tank as we work together to move the needle in the right direction when it comes to diversity, inclusion, and equity in STEM. So we’ve been serving as their premier source of talent, but we’re also partners when it comes to diversity, inclusion and equity.

Our theme for this year's event is “Ascend to Transcend,” because we believe now more than ever, our members in the Hispanic community need inspiration to achieve new levels of success. And an interesting factoid; at our convention in 2019 (and we do expect this to be true for 2020) 58% of our attendees were first-generation college students. Almost 60% of our student attendees were first generation.

"So when we at SHPE say 'We change lives,' we ABSOLUTELY change lives. Not just of our student members, but of their families, and generation. We change the socio-economic trajectory for that member and their family. And we’ve been doing that for 46 years. So it’s very powerful, what we do at SHPE."

The virtual platform that we’ll be using for our convention is very sophisticated, and we chose this option because it allows face-to-face video interactions. SHPE is all about face-to-face video connections, and thousands of interviews will be happening. We have doubled the number of days for interviews. When we have an in-person onsite convention it’s 2.5 interviewing days, so this virtual experience is allowing us to extend that to 5 interviewing days. So I want anyone and everyone to know that we have organizations that are recruiting and that will be making offers on the spot. And to give you an idea of the magnitude of what happens, last year Boeing offered 180 job offers during the convention, Lockheed, 150, American Express, 80. So these partners are showing up in full effect, they are ready to interview and make offers. And what’s really game-changing about the fact that this is virtual is that we understand that COVID-19 has impacted everyone. It has certainly impacted, in a very hard way, the Hispanic community. So while there’s a registration fee, our members and attendees won’t have to pay for travel or hotels or food, and more importantly in response to COVID-19 we at SHPE set up an all-in relief fund, scholarships for members (whether students or professionals) who have been impacted by COVID-19 and who need financial assistance for registration. So there should be no reason if anyone wants to attend the SHPE convention, they can’t. We have set aside funds, corporate sponsors have donated, I’ve donated my speaker fees to help. And we’ve got some really interesting partnerships too. For example, we’re working with The Dream US, and they are offering very specific sessions for Dreamers as well as sessions for employers on how to work with Dreamers or how they might hire Dreamers. We’re also, and this is personally very exciting for me as a lawyer, partnering with the Hispanic National Bar Association. So if there’s a premier national organization for Hispanics in STEM like SHPE, a premier national organization for Hispanics in the law is the HNBA, and they are co-locating their Intellectual Property Summit at our convention, and that is significant. When you think about the convergence of law and STEM, the most obvious is intellectual property, but there are other synergies—compliance, regulatory, ethics. And what’s exciting about some of these workshops is one of the things I noticed when I was practicing law and retaining law firms and having to go secure expert witnesses for cases was there wasn’t a lot of diversity amongst expert witnesses. So HNBA will start training SHPE members as engineers across 40 different disciplines to become experts to testify for legal cases. How cool is that? There’s even a workshop on training professional SHPE members to become patent examiner officers for the U.S. Patent & Trade Office, because we need diversity there as well. Another exciting moment happening at this year's convention is that we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the SHPEtinas. They are our female members, and their program focuses on igniting Latinas in STEM. Ten years ago it began as a few workshops at our convention, and fast-forward a decade, now we have an entire conference for the SHPEtinas at our convention, with yearlong programming happening for women and Latinas in STEM. And the SHPEtina conference is one of five conferences happening at the main SHPE Convention: there’s the Pre-College conference for middle and high school (free for anyone in those grades), the SHPEtinas conference, and the Academic Conference (for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, advisors, and deans), our Professionals in STEM conference, and finally our Technology & Innovation conference. Anyone attending isn’t locked into one conference, they can traverse different conferences depending on what they are interested in. There’s something for everyone!" 

Victoria: "How would you encourage people to get involved with SHPE?"

Raquel: "Well, I’m a very practical person. And I would first say to register for our convention from October 26-31. You can register at SHPE.org/2020. Beyond that, if you want you can help donate to the all-in relief fund to sponsor a student to attend the convention or someone who’s been affected by COVID-19. And more broadly, we’re always looking for volunteers, speakers, presenters, and more importantly, for mentors, role models, and leaders. There’s lots of opportunities to step in and step up, to serve as a leader within SHPE: at a chapter, regional, or even national level. We have a few open seats on our National Board of Directors, and I always think it’s really cool to say you sit on a board that impacts tens of thousands of lives. It’s all about diversity, inclusion, and equity at the end of the day."

Follow Raquel on LinkedIn.

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Next week's guest: Vishen Lakhiani

I'm looking forward to our next guest who'll be joining us, Vishen Lakhiani. As the founder and CEO of education platform Mindvalley as well as an author, here's what I'll be asking Vishen:

• In an interview from a few years ago, you previously had a 25 hour commute. How has that changed in the time of COVID-19, and what do you think the future will look like?
• What was the inspiration for starting Mindvalley, and how have you approached your entrepreneurship journey?
• What advice would you have for people looking to incorporate mindfulness into their day-to-day life?

Weigh in with your own questions for Vishen in the comments below, and as always, thank you for reading.