Hispanic Enterprise - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 49) The technique, which she learned in Singapore, permits small non-competitive ventures to pool their resources, putting them on equal footing with larger companies in bidding sitations. Garza Fernandez also served as president of the Southern Arizona Technology Council, where she again employed technology clustering to help local businesses. In Tucson, there are many small, highly specialized tech companies that are highly dependent on bigger companies such as Raytheon for subcontracting work. When the subcontract disappears, however, so do the firms, which are unable to survive. By promoting cooperation, Fernandez helped form six technology clusters were able to survive on their own. HISPANIC ENTERPRISE Garza Fernandez also founded the non-profit Technology Development and Research Institute, Inc. to apply for grants and government contracts—which soon come streaming into Tucson. It seemed inevitable that Garza Fernandez would eventually becomes involved in her own cluster, Unmanned Vehicles Technologies, LLC. The company designs and manufactures UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, that record and transmit video images of borders, enemy troop movements and emplacements, harbors, utility lines and any other objects that require snooping. The two little UAV models—the Paparazzi and the CyberEye—can be programmed on the fly or put on autopilot, auto-launch, auto-land or simply ditched when the mission is completed or compromised. Garza Fernandez found the UAVs have a need for video technology, propelling her into yet another arena. She took the Array camera developed in Maryland to have an expansive 190degree image capability—and since the more sensors the better when it comes to detecting threats—her team combined it with a SENTRI acoustics sensor. Which, by the way, is made by another company she owns, Safety Dynamics, Inc. SENTRI is a neurologically based sensor that builds up a library of ambient noise, so anything out of the ordinary—like a gunshot—sets off an alarm. SENTRI can be tied into the Array camera and smart weapons to look, listen and shoot in the direction of a threatening sound like an IED explosion. And there’s more. Another of her companies, Fernandez Enterprises, designs and makes three product lines: aluminum aircraft-maintenance platforms that wrap right around the plane for total access by maintenance crews; specialized coatings to make corroded old parts of a machine like new, so they don’t need replacements; and high-end, super-secure containers for sensitive and expensive cargo like missiles, Rolls Royce engines or even unmanned aerial vehicles. When Garza Fernandez grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, near Detroit, there were only about 20 Hispanic families in the area. They had come, she says, “to sweep up all the money” from the auto industry. But her grandfather, who worked at a foundry, taught her that a bigger future awaited her. He’d sit for hours with his 4-inch-thick dictionary translating the newspaper, and extolled the value of learning English. By the time she enrolled in Michigan State University she already displayed uncanny skill at multi-tasking. She worked for a state representative responding to constituents, worked as a peer counselor chiefly for minorities, taught pre-school, and worked at a government-funded agency monitoring government community grants. Young Sally took pre-law courses as well because her dad grew up in Texas in a migrant family from Mexico and he still had brothers and sisters working in the fields that she met on trips to the Lone Star State. She wanted to be a labor lawyer before other opportunities intervened. “I paid for all my own schooling and paid for my car,” she says. “I was obsessed with doing things for myself.” There appears to be no area Garza Fernandez is reluctant to explore, especially if it produces answers to problems puzzling the world of business and industry. She tries to keep a balance between all the market segments she targets, but with the world situation being what it is, the military weighs heavily in her sales. As if all of that weren’t enough to keep several people busy, she recently became a board member of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. When last seen, the Tucson-based, frequent-flying, multitasking, problem-solving entrepreneur showed few signs of slowing down. 49 EARLY DAYS December/January 2008
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