Contributions
About
Born in Mexico. Bred in South Central, particularly Watts & Compton. Studied Business & Gerontology at USC & did PhD level Alzheimer's research in the Spanish-speaking community at age 18. Learned to program in BASIC in high school & fell in love w/tech even more once I bought my own PC in college & built USC's first public-facing web page in 1994. Worked at several startups & at Ticketmaster, was Lead Release Engineer on various products including TicketExchange which is still around today & has been used billions of times in buying a ticket for any & every sporting event in the world.
In 2005, started contributing to Open Source- Ubuntu, OpenOffice & Songbird. In 2007, chose Drupal (over WP) as my CMS of choice due to better security features & a built-in API. Founded the Downtown LA Drupal Users Group which, at its peak, attracted more than 110 attendees for a monthly meetup. Also co-organized various tech & Drupal conferences. Was a member of Drupal's Core QA Testing Team. In 2013, my dad passed away & I shifted my focus (as a way to honor him) & started Software Libre United in an effort to bring more awareness to Open Source & tech to LA's Spanish-speaking community (LA has the largest % of Spanish-speakers in the country at ~55% of Angelenos speaking it).
2023, marks the 30th year in a row that I donate a portion of my free time to the community- particularly in Black & Latino/a neighborhoods as these communities are consistently shut out of the tech boom. I was a youth coach starting while I was a student at USC to 8-12 year olds, I've taught adults how to read in English & Spanish, I've given citizenship classes & ESL classes. Everything I've ever done has been free of charge in an effort to uplift these communities. In 2016, I created a curriculum in English & Spanish for adults to learn how to use a computer from zero, implemented at various LA Public Libraries & then Open-Source'd it, donated it to the entire LAPL network of libraries.
I've earned awards from the City of Los Angeles.
President Obama, in 2016, awarded me the President's National Volunteer Service Award.
In 2005, started contributing to Open Source- Ubuntu, OpenOffice & Songbird. In 2007, chose Drupal (over WP) as my CMS of choice due to better security features & a built-in API. Founded the Downtown LA Drupal Users Group which, at its peak, attracted more than 110 attendees for a monthly meetup. Also co-organized various tech & Drupal conferences. Was a member of Drupal's Core QA Testing Team. In 2013, my dad passed away & I shifted my focus (as a way to honor him) & started Software Libre United in an effort to bring more awareness to Open Source & tech to LA's Spanish-speaking community (LA has the largest % of Spanish-speakers in the country at ~55% of Angelenos speaking it).
2023, marks the 30th year in a row that I donate a portion of my free time to the community- particularly in Black & Latino/a neighborhoods as these communities are consistently shut out of the tech boom. I was a youth coach starting while I was a student at USC to 8-12 year olds, I've taught adults how to read in English & Spanish, I've given citizenship classes & ESL classes. Everything I've ever done has been free of charge in an effort to uplift these communities. In 2016, I created a curriculum in English & Spanish for adults to learn how to use a computer from zero, implemented at various LA Public Libraries & then Open-Source'd it, donated it to the entire LAPL network of libraries.
I've earned awards from the City of Los Angeles.
President Obama, in 2016, awarded me the President's National Volunteer Service Award.