Manny Hernandez for SHPE President 2011/2013

By Melissa Villegas Drake

Please VOTE for Manny Hernandez!

The position of National President is the most challenging and critical position within SHPE.  I know this from personal experience having served as national president myself, 1995-1997.  SHPE is a much more complex organization today than when I was president.  The challenges are greater. The issues are more intricate and the solutions more elusive.

Manny Hernandez is the best candidate for SHPE President.

I met Manny Hernandez when I was serving as a committee chair for SHPE in the 1990’s and was immediately impressed by his commitment to the organization.  Manny has served SHPE in many capacities and has made SHPE a part of his life.  He believes strongly in what the organization promotes:  “Better Opportunities for Hispanic engineers”.  I have seen first-hand Manny’s growth as a leader within the organization.  He is without a doubt the best candidate for SHPE National President.  He is ready to lead.

One of Manny’s major focus areas is the SHPE National conference which he has championed, and has chaired over the last 20 years, including the SHPE 2009 conference, the most successful SHPE conference to date.  The SHPE national conference is our premier event and has enjoyed great success under Manny’s leadership over these years.  The national conference has the most impact on our membership, new and existing, as well as our corporate partners in that it serves as a showcase for our best Hispanic technical talent.  With Manny as National President, I am certain our conference will continue to enjoy great success.

Manny’s other passion has been the establishment of professional development programs.  He has championed these efforts longer than any other director on the national board.  Several SHPE members have attributed their career advancement to skills acquired and honed in these programs.  SHPE’s offering of these types of professional development programs has resulted in increased professional membership.  SHPE must continue to offer these programs for our member’s future career growth.  Manny is the only candidate that will make this a priority for SHPE.

Melissa Villegas Drake
Past National SHPE President
Lifetime Member
Tolleson Union High School Junior SHPE Chapter Advisor

Share on Facebook

This year’s SHPE elections are a fork in the road for the future of SHPE.  There is no doubt that SHPE has come a long way the past six years.  Our professional membership has grown from approximately 800 to nearly 1,800 currently, we have almost 10,000 total members, and we have the largest group of corporate sponsors ever at 55 companies.  This is the result of the efforts of many dedicated and committed people.

Our student leaders, our professional leaders, and our staff make the difference yet, a lot remains to be done.  Who will set the agenda and direction for our progress?

As in any organization, business or government, this is the responsibility of the President, so this means that YOU, with your vote will decide the future of SHPE. There are 3 candidates, with 3 different platforms but I believe I am the only one with the vision, the energy, and the experience to keep the momentum going and move SHPE forward.

Please vote, and when you do, vote for Manny Hernandez. Together, we will build the Future of SHPE.

Share on Facebook

By Manny  Hernandez

Why does SHPE’s new management structure matter to the chapters?  Why do I feel that our new management structure is important to SHPE’s future?

There are four important elements in governing and operating a Membership Organization, or any business for that matter: Strategy, Policy, Management, and Operations. The reality is that today the National Board of Directors (NBOD) spends most of it’s time on management and operations. All changes, big and small, require discussion and approval by the NBOD.

This is a slow process given that we are elected volunteers with limited free time and we only meet 6 or 7 times a year. What this means is that even small improvements requiring investment or changes in operational priorities take a long time to approve and implement.

So how does this affect the chapters? Let me describe one example: We have very talented members, and they have great ideas which they try to implement at the local level, and sometimes they need national support. This support is usually slow in coming by today’s standards.

That is one serious problem, but it does not end there.

These great ideas would benefit the other chapters as well, yet to transfer these great ideas and programs to the rest of SHPE would again require the intervention of the NBOD. A rapid change process requires the right strategy and policies that protect our mission and the nature of the organization but yet frees up our chapters and staff  to act on behalf of our members and our community.

To accomplish this, the National Board of Directors needs to spend it’s limited and therefore precious time defining strategies and setting these policies, and  delegate the management and operations to a skilled and experienced professional staff.

We are a great organization but we have the potential to be a National Force for the betterment of the Hispanic community. I believe that under this new structure SHPE can become a 100,000 plus members organization with 10 times the operating budget within the next 10 years. One can only imagine the benefits this could bring to our members and our community. This will mean that more of our children will become engineers and scientists and more Latinos will occupy the corner office, which then, will use their position to further SHPE’s mission, the Hispanic cause, and as President Obama recently stated, drive America’s future.

We began the journey towards this governance structure three years ago. We all believed we were on the right path and we started the transition, but we are not done yet, it will take the right leader to keep us on course and complete the transformation.  Someonewho does not understand this will end up hurting the organization, our community, and our country.

Share on Facebook

I am exceedingly encouraged by the news that the 2009 SHPE Executive Leadership Institute (ELI) passed a major hurdle this past Friday when 20 SHPE Members holding advanced management positions were selected to attend.

I was concerned that with the current economic environment, where professional development funds are being cut and similar programs offered by sister organizations are being canceled, that the program would not attract enough interest within the short deadline we established.

Having more than enough qualified applicants sign up in record time shows that SHPE has done a greatjob in designing a program that meets the needs of future executives. We have hit the mark again!

Even better news, we can still accommodate 10 more members. If you have the courage to aspire to some day occupy the corner office, and you meet the criteria for ELI, I encourage you to apply. And please also pass the word that this fine program is still accepting applications.

To find out more about ELI go to the SHPE website, at SHPE.org and click on the Events tab and then on ELI.

Manny Hernandez

Share on Facebook

By Rosemary Maguire

I have known Manny since 1984, with the good fortune to meet him while organizing a career fair for the Hispanic Engineering Organization at UNM. He was always very passionate about helping Latino engineering students get excellent job opportunities and continued to support them as they learned and grew into working professionals.  Of the many recruiting individuals I have met over the years, Manny consistently persevered in his quest to present excellent opportunities to the Latino student community and he remains steady in his perseverance today.

Much has taken place over the years, technologically speaking, and today Manny has raised the bar to new levels of achievement and aspirations to continue on his quest to further assist professionals and students alike to reach leadership levels within their companies and careers.  A veteran National Board Member (NBOD), Manny is very involved in plans to take SHPE to increased levels of excellence by providing tools to propel members to higher levels through the use of current technology.

Manny has always been an easy person to approach and speak with.  He has always entertained others ideas and continues to have a very open door policy in his current roles.  He realizes the importance of two minds being better than one and welcomes the opportunity to have dialogue and share ideas with other SHPE members.  I look forward to seeing the progress that SHPE will benefit from because of this passionate individual and his quest to provide excellent tools so that members can more easily network and grow.

Share on Facebook

By Leonard Abeyta

Manny Hernandez for President

I was elated when Manny told me he was running for President!  This is a very natural step for someone that has been a key leader over the last 20 years in the organization and has been the innovator and driver for many of SHPE most successful programs.  As a lifetime member of SHPE and a fellow National Board of Director I have seen his commitment and dedication first hand.  This started when I first met Manny as an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico and over the years working with him and the rest of the board on numerous projects.

Many of our most successful programs can be attributed to his leadership.

·         Championed the creation of the Industrial Partnership Council (IPC) – This is one of the most important programs for SHPE today as it funds many of the programs for SHPE.

·         Created and implemented the SHPE Executive Director role –this was the organizational lead outside of the National Board of Directors until the creation of the CEO role a few years ago.

·         SHPE Professional Development Series

·         SHPE National Conference

• Manny has chaired or co-chaired the last 6 of the last 16 National SHPE conferences, and actively championed the rest.  If you have attended one of the events in the last 10 years you know these events have been top notch.
• Manny chaired the committee that proposed moving the national conference out of Los Angeles in 1991, a very important and difficult task.
• As in 1991, when a mature leader was required for a difficult task, Manny again rose to the occasion again to spearhead moving the conference from the winter to the fall, facing strong opposition, and it was a resounding success resulting in unprecedented growth.
• Oversaw a special project that became the framework for strategic planning of the conference in terms of site selection, vendor selection and programs.

·         Launched the SHPE Magazine – drove the efforts to change the format from a newsletter to a magazine to put us on the same level as other minority organizations and serve as a new source for revenue.

I can spend hours talking about all the great things that Manny has done for the organization but there is more to him than just accomplishments.  We all go thru life changes and some of us drop out of SHPE…NOT Manny Hernandez…. He has truly made SHPE a part of his life and consistently served in key roles.  His dedication and willingness to take SHPE in new directions when others may not have is a testament to his leadership.  I invite you to join me in supporting Manny Hernandez for President.

Manny is the only one who can do the job.

Share on Facebook

This weekend the SHPE National Board of Directors met in Lexington, Kentucky.  We discussed some very exciting topics and made some important decisions that affect our membership and constituents. The purpose of this blog post is to communicate with you some of what transpired at the recent meeting, and going forward I’d like to continue sharing about what the SHPE board is working on, and to give you the opportunity to ask me questions and start this two-way dialog.

Some of the more exciting things we discussed were upcoming events, such as NILA (National Institute of Leadership Advancement) in Fort Worth, TX from August 5-8. the SHPE conference in Washington, DC, Oct. 28-Nov.1, 2009, and ELI, Executive Leadership Institute, May 10 - 15 2009 in Palo Alto, CA, sponsored by Hewlett Packard.  We are making very important enhancements to the professional agenda for these programs, something near and dear to my heart.

One of the changes is with the ELI conference. We are including a new module called Emotional Intelligence, or EI. Essentially it is a way to manage one’s emotions and redirect them, in a positive way, to create cooperation and collaboration with others. This is a effective Personal Development tool that enhances people’s leadership skills. The experts claim that EQ (Emotional Intelligen Quotient) is more important to leadership than IQ.

The board of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers is very excited to be working on these new projects, and I can’t wait to share more news of this nature with you.

Manny

Share on Facebook

Why have I got a blog post title with two seemingly unrelated terms?  Very simple.  The Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, or SHPE, has been innovating with new types of programs, like SHPE’s Executive Leadership Institute and other professional development programs as I outlined here in an earlier article. The problem is the word is not getting out to non-members.

SHPE members receive the newsletters and the updates.   Latino Engineers who are NOT SHPE members make up a much larger number of Latino Engineers than actual SHPE members.

How do we bridge the gap?

Social Media.

One of my goals as President of SHPE is to build on the grassroots efforts of many SHPE members who have started blogs and Facebook groups, and to implement a concerted, integrated effort for SHPE to reach out to non-members to get the word out about what SHPE can offer to enhance their careers.

This graphic, put out by Forrester, explains very well how the corporate demographic that we need to go after is already actively involved in Social Media:

Our target demographic already uses social media extensively.  Creators, or people who create blogs or Facebook groups, make up 43% of corporate America. Joiners, or people who join social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook, make up 48%.  A whopping 91% are spectators, meaning they read blogs!!!

I believe the time is ripe for SHPE to actively engage in a conversation via the various social media tools out there, whether Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and even our own social media applications as I mentioned earlier.  This effort would enable us to reach out to Latino engineering professionals who are not members and inform them about these innovative leadership programs.

Why do this?  Well the self-interested answer would be to gain new members.  The correct answer is to empower the larger Hispanic community, and our particular niche, Hispanic engineers. As our vision states:

SHPE is the leading social-technical organization whose primary function is to enhance and achieve the potential of Hispanics in engineering, math and science.

Social Media is also a very powerful way to receive feedback from the community.  The SHPE corporate website, a must-have, is a one-way conversation: the organization talking to the public.  Social Media enables a two way conversation.  It empowers independent thinking, as this blog, and other election blog represents.  It can also be a place to air grievances, something which SHPE should not shy away from, but should embrace as we move forward and change to provide more value to Latino engineering professionals.

What do you think?  How should SHPE get the word out to non-members about some of our valuable programs?  Should we launch headlong into Social Media? I welcome your thoughts.

Manny Hernandez

Share on Facebook

My vision consists of a three point plan to assist our professionals advance and realize their full potential.  1.  Skills for Success, 2. Technology for Collaboration, and 3. the Power Net.

1. Skills for Success.  I will continue to promote PDS/MGT/ELI programs that I have championed these past six years. These programs have proven very effective and I will continue to update and renew them to maintain their relevance for the budding manager/executive.  I also have plans to enhance the Professional Development Series with an innovative curriculum focused on helping our members acquire the skills to effectively compete in today’s global economy.

2. Technology for Collaboration.  Our members can be a tremendous resource to each other in identifying opportunities, providing career advice, or even bringing job offers to one another. As president, I will provide the technology and infrastructure to be able to connect and collaborate using the power of the internet. I will open SHPE so that our talented members can create the collaboration tools they need to exploit the power of their networks.

3. The Power Net.  We, SHPE, need to increase our membership from the approximately 2100 we have today to 10,000 members by 2011. We will attract and retain more and higher level talent by offering improved services, such as job postings via OneSHPE links, podcasts, a nationwide network of professionals, and the opportunity to apply their ideas and make a difference, both to each other and in their community and to America.

Share on Facebook

As candidate for SHPE President during the 2009 elections, I have been intrigued by issues facing Latino engineers already in the workforce.  What are the challenges facing Latino engineers?  Are we advancing to executive levels or staying stagnant?  Are we becoming founders of successful start-up companies?  Are there future Latino Bill Gates or Steve Jobs out there, or rather Guillermo Gaticas or Esteban Juarez?

One thing I know for a fact is that according to recent demographic data, children of the latest Hispanic immigrants will be the largest contributor to population growth in the U.S., and Latino household income is growing as well.

Increasing population growth and income levels.  This is a recognized trend.

There’s an old Chinese proverb (well maybe not a Chinese proverb, but a saying nonetheless), a rising tide raises all boats.  There is a wave that Hispanic engineers are riding and can ride, but our representation in the U.S. corporate world is still disproportionately small compared to our percentage of the U.S. population. That is especially so at the upper echelons of corporate America.

SHPE has done an awesome job, as you know, of encouraging our youth to take up engineering in college and enter the workforce, often making more money straight out of school than both our parents combined.  What I believe SHPE has NOT done a great job of is helping those professionals who have entered the workforce advance to even higher levels.

According to this recent Careerbuilder article, nearly one third of Hispanics have experienced some sort of discrimination in the workforce.

The good news is that means the majority of Hispanics have not experienced discrimination in the workplace.  The bad news is that almost 33% is way too high in this day and age.  Obviously corporations need to continue with sensitivity training and implement diversity strategies, but Latinos can’t rely exclusively on programs to influence the behaviors of others.

We need to take action ourselves to minimize the impact of discrimination, and advance in corporate America no matter what the barriers.

That’s where I believe SHPE can play an important  role.

As Hispanic Engineers, we possess the technical skills, certifications and qualifications to do our engineering jobs.  We also need to perfect the human skills that are so important to career advancement.

We need to learn more about EQ, or Emotional Intelligence, which is now being recognized as more important for success in life than IQ, or mere intellectual intelligence. We need sales, marketing and self-promotional skills, attributes which are often contrary to our traditional Latino humility and reluctance to draw attention to ourselves.

As candidate for SHPE President, and as your current Vice President, and not to mention as an engineer working at a real company, I have been thinking long and hard about these issues, and I feel these are areas we must focus on as we continue to grow.

We are becoming a “Majority Minority” nation, and natural demographic trends are definitely in our favor, but organizations like SHPE must change in order to help working professionals rise to ever  higher levels. With your help, I intend to lead that charge to jointly explore how Latino Engineers can continue to advance.

Share on Facebook