A Candid Journey of Passion, Determination, Grit, and Vision

Sometimes I look back into my journey and all of the challenges I faced as a first generation immigrant from Ecuador and think with tremendous gratitude how lucky I am to have been born with an unwavering gift and passion for computers and systems. 

My family dabbled between the small town of Cuenca and the Amazon Rainforest. Cuenca, also known as the Athens of Ecuador is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for it's colonial architecture, artisanal prowess, and extensive natural beauty. Everything in Cuenca is handmade, my Grandparents from both sides of my family dabbled in artisanal pursuits. My Grandfather, a jeweler, designed bespoke pieces to extreme handcrafted detail. My Grandmother would sit and weave Panama Hats for hours until perfect. The rest of my family dabbled in farming through vast amounts of land from the city into the jungle. At some point during my early childhood most of my family sold everything to venture into the USA and follow the American Dream.

My mother, given the opportunity to go to the US, decided to stay behind and take care of me. She dropped out of college and made it her mission to ensure I was taken care of and encouraged me to pursue education at any cost. I remember my childhood at this point being devoid of toys and luxuries. We lived in humble apartments and traveled constantly into the Amazon. In the jungle, I was surrounded by nature, swimming in rivers, climbing trees for fruit, and shortly after I started to create my own toys out of wood and broken electronics. I recall taking apart motors and electronics from tapedecks, toasters, and TVs to make my own RC cars. Some would explode, others would live on during my childhood. My favorite toys were a screwdriver and a makeshift soldering gun I had to heat up for hours to create connections. I wanted to take apart everything in my horizon and as my mother says "you were always curious about how capacitors and wires can make things work, you would look at a board and say how the chips look like small buildings and roads." A great foreshadow into the future. In school, I was telling my teachers I wanted to become a Doctor when I grow up.

Eventually, my grandmother sent a computer from NYC, it lived amongst our humble apartment with no internet or applications. I was fascinated about the electronics that made this machine work. I ditched my "toys" for MS-DOS, Turbo Pascal, and Floppy Disks.