Manny Hernandez SHPE President 2009/2011

Hitting the mail next week are over 1,000 copies of SHPE Magazine’s Fall 2010 issue–going out to nearly 100 high schools nationwide who will receive multiple copies. Many of these high school copies are sponsored by the Society’s most valued partners. With this outreach, it is our hope to positively influence students at the high school level to consider technical studies in college. The magazines are distributed to Hispanic students through career counselors and guidance offices.

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Omar De Leon, National Graduate Representative, and past Region VII Student Representative, was selected among six of the top students at the University of Miami to be the Student Commencement Speaker for the graduating class of over 2500 students. He graduated first in his environmental engineering class at the University of Miami, where he earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a B.S. in Environmental Engineering. He is currently pursuing a graduate degree in those fields at Carnegie Mellon University.
Omar is another outstanding example of the potential of Hispanic youth in the USA. The future of the Hispanic community and the United States is riding on the continued success of Hispanic youth such as Omar. As SHPE National President, I am confident when I say that we are very proud of Omar!!

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Don’t forget SHPE National Conference, the largest technical conference for Hispanics, is Oct 28-30, 2010 in Cincinnati, OH! Visit SHPE.org for details

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Tomorrow is the last day to choose a new SHPE President. Your vote will decide the destiny of SHPE, and therefore, the destiny of many Latinos in our country. Why am I so convinced of it?

Let me tell you my own story, not unlike that of many Hispanics. In fact, this is one that I hear time after time. Having been raised in a poor Puerto Rican family in NY, the school system had already decided that I would be a mechanic, a construction worker, or if lucky, a print shop operator, but no more. I did not know any better, my parents did not know any better, and we thought it was good. It must have been, right? It was the US school system!

Luckily, the chairman of the math department saw something in me and got me out of vocational shops and put me through all the math and science classes. With enthusiasm and in earnest I took all the courses I could and did not stop until graduating with a master’s degree. I have been a successful engineer for more than 30 years, have worked in many exciting projects, and have been trusted with national defense responsibilities. But just the same, I could have ended up very short of this, had it not been for the one person who made a difference in my life.

That was more than 30 years ago and you would have thought that our school system would have seen the light by now. Not really. Just a few years ago, my daughter was being steered towards home economic classes so that she would assume her rightful place in the kitchen. This did not sit well with me as you can imagine so of course I prevented this from happening. She went on to graduate third in her class and today she holds a masters degree. I was lucky, and that made my daughter lucky, but most Hispanic kids are not.

That is what SHPE is all about. We have a network of people that make a difference to each other and we make a difference to our kids. Each of us can change someone’s history and by it, everyone else around them.

You, with your vote, can change history, and you can choose to help SHPE change the history of many Latinos, by helping hundreds of thousands of Hispanic students and professionals to be the top engineers they deserve to be. That is my vision and my plan.

If you have not done it yet, please cast your vote.

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The last day for SHPE elections is around the corner.  Your vote counts- watch the video and passthis link around!

You have the swing vote - Vote for Manny!

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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