SHPE - Spring 2009 - (Page 6)

A LETTER FROM THE CEO I t has been nine months since I joined SHPE as your CEO. I can say, without collaborating. People are text messaging, blogging, Twittering and getting news on their iPhone and BlackBerry devices wherever they are. Companies are outsourcing, insourcing, and crowdsourcing (users doing the work) to save money and to increase revenue. Huge virtual communities are emerging without structure. Within just a few years, Facebook and MySpace grew from zero users to hundreds of millions. In fact, if MySpace were a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world! Content and information are being generated daily at the rate of 10 petabytes (10 x 10^15 bytes) by people like you and me, through a trillion Internet devices. Information can now move at 14 trillion bits per second through a single strand of optic fiber. The future is now. We are not only creating new ways of doing things, but we are also creating new jobs. The engineers and scientists that will rise to the top in the new economy will require a new set of skills that cannot be learned in school or in the traditional Latino home. These skills include leadership and entrepreneurship, “Internet-ship,” cultural awareness and social responsibility as well as the ability to work and compete in virtual teams. These are but a few of the skills that our members get through SHPE. We have done a lot, but there is still a lot more to be done. We have to bring our organization and our people to the new millennium and beyond. The challenges cannot be ignored, and the opportunities are many. Through technology, we can reach out to the more than 30,000 college students and 700,000 Hispanic technical professionals to make them part of our community. Through collaborative Internet-based tools, we can deliver professional development and connect our members with opportunities. Through crowdsourcing, we can create bigger and better programs. Hispanics are the largest minority in the United States and make up 29 percent of Millennials or Generation Y (people born between 1982 and 2000). They are becoming street smart, skilled Internet surfers and savvy technology users. These are the leaders of tomorrow, SHPE’s future and our country’s future. When I put it all together, SHPE is like a rocket sitting on the pad ready to take off: “T minus three seconds and counting . . . two, one, and we have liftoff!” Mission SHPE is on its way to the future. Our task is to develop our young ones and ourselves into the leaders that our country needs. If we each do our part, there is no stopping us. I look forward to working with you in fulfilling our destiny. Enrique Gomez Chief Executive Officer SHPE Inc. SHPE ❘ Spring 2009 hesitation, that it has been an extremely exciting, challenging and rewarding journey. In 2008 we had the most successful NILA and SHPE Conference events ever, and we are poised to make the events in 2009 even bigger and better. Beyond an excellent execution by a great team of volunteers and staff, these results were directly related to the momentum created under Diana Gomez’s leadership. Let’s rewind six years to when SHPE started the journey from “Good to Great.” We knew we had a good organization, the best in its class. Yet to become a great organization, very important strategic choices had to be made. We had to restate our mission, recreate the SHPE Foundation under a new name and renew our focus on delivering value to our members and sponsors. We also had to invest in our infrastructure − skills, processes, organization and tools − and move the SHPE Conference to the fall. The decisions were difficult, the changes painful and the work exhausting, but the payoff was well worth the effort. As a result, we have experienced unprecedented growth in membership and sponsors. We have also created new programs covering the spectrum from kindergarten through the executive levels and expanded our junior and international memberships. Most importantly, we have delivered on our mission of being The Source for Quality Hispanic Engineers and Technical Talent. But the world around us has changed radically in the last six years. Today’s headlines focus on the economy, layoffs, the mortgage crisis, market fluctuations and war in the Middle East. While we are confronted with an economic downturn that few of us could have predicted nine months ago, I still choose to be optimistic. The market could use some optimism, too, as the United States continues to be the largest economy in the world. In his most recent book, “The Age of Turbulence,” Alan Greenspan confidently described a resilient U.S. economy that depended less on politics and more on the global markets and where trillions of dollars exchanged hands daily around the world, despite the headlines. We are going through a profound transformation that is making our world not only smaller and flatter, but also smarter. The traditional command and control organizations and business structures are being made obsolete by people connecting and 6

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of SHPE - Spring 2009

SHPE - Spring 2009 Contents President’s Letter A Letter from the CEO Calendar Browser Diana Gomez, SHPE: The People's President Grace Lieblein, GM: A Driving Force in Mexico Dr. Elsa Murano, Texas A&M: Education with Impact Regions Connect and Explore Common Base 'Learn by Doing' A Grad Degree, for Free? Programs & Services Think, Pair, Share: Partnering to Increase STEM Awareness Inner Circle Employer Profiles STAR Awards: Call for Nominations Regional Roundup

SHPE - Spring 2009

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