Influencing the Present and Future of Tech
story by: virginia isaad
Sandra Lopez is a mother, first-generation Mexican-American and the vice president at Intel Capital and general manager at Intel Sports. As the VP of Intel, one of the largest and most powerful technology companies, she’s part of the 3 to 5% of Latinx who are in executive roles in technology, while a report found that 83% of tech executives are white.
SANDRA WAS BORN in San Mateo, California after her family moved from Mexico when her dad, a horse jockey, received an opportunity to work in the U.S.. She grew up in an “arguably middle class neighborhood,” mainly white and went to private Catholic school with only two other students of Mexican descent. ”I grew up a majority of my life really trying to figure out how I fit in because when you’re growing up [in a predominantly white neighborhood], oftentimes you become the outlier or you become ostracized.”
“MY UPBRING ALLOWED ME TO LEARN THE TALENT OF BEING
A CHAMELEON AND AT THE SAME TIME MY PARENTS DID A WONDERFUL JOB OF MAKING SURE WHEN WE CAME HOME WE SPOKE SPANISH IN THE HOUSE, WE UNDERSTOOD OUR VALUES AND WHAT WE REPRESENTED FROM CAME FROM MEXICO, THE NOTION OF RESPETO.”
Sandra recalls returning to the small town of San Miguel el Alto in Jalisco where her mom grew up. It was this every Summer trip that allowed her to realize that “the advantage of being bicultural is that you recognize the importance of looking at the world from different points of view.”
She explains how growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood in California meant living with a lot of presumptions. She specifically describes how people would presume her father was a gardener. or how she would be asked about getting into college due to her ethnicity instead of her intellect. Sandra accepts that because of the prejudice happening in California she hid her ethnicity leading people to assume she was Italian, Mexican, or white American.
“This is where I learned how to fit in, how to survive in the chameleon aspect. Then I went to college and I started to get more active in the Latino community. I didn’t really get active until I fast forward my career. I started in Corporate America and I learned how to be one of the guys.”
Then in 2005 a colleague at Intel, Ernie Felix, scheduled a meeting on her calendar about Latino leadership at Intel. It was during this meeting that she was asked by her friend “What does it feel like to be a Latina?”
Sandra replied saying how she didn’t really understood what he was talking about because she had never made herself that question or even think that gender or ethnicity was an issue. It was a question that bothered her for months. It was that moment when she realized that her being a Mexican American gave her so much to offer to society and to her company. "We were becoming the majority, I represented 50% of the population, why should I be hiding who I am?” said Sandra.
She describes her experience as a long journey to self discovery. A discovery about the power of being bicultural, the gift of being Mexican and the power in her gender and the responsibilities it entails to make sure Latinx voices are represented in the tech industry. She emphasizes how the “power of belonging” is just as important as ensuring there’s diversity in order to people feel valued.
Sandra also shares about how she got into technology though she was initially interested in fashion. During college she took software engineering courses that piqued her interest. It was a combination of both industries that launched her career in Corporate America. She first started her career working in the fashion retail industry as a buyer. During a luncheon in Silicon Valley, the Chief Operating Officer of the company she was working at told her she was never going to succeed inside that company specifically because she was a woman.
Being in Silicon Valley helped Sandra realize that her passion was more about human interactions and “what drives society forward”. She was intersted in how technology played into that. She decided to leave fashion and take what she learned in college to pivot into tech. It was that executive leader's comment, she says, that pushed her to quit the next day and set her sights for a job in a C-Suite position.
She began in Silicon Graphics and has since remained in this industry. She explains how she remains in the techi ndustry because technology, similar to music, sports and fashion, is always driving culture. She cites the power of social media specifically in the Arab Spring in 2010 and more recently with the Trump rally where TikTok users reserved seats though they had no intention to attend. While she acknowledges the digital divide, she also sees how technology can make education more egalitarian as long as someone has access to devices and wifi.
Throughout her career both in startups and corporate, she’s discovered the number one theme that has enabled her to succeed: "In some cases women have an advantage when it comes to emotional intelligence. Having as much IQ (intelligence quotient) as you do EQ (emotional quotient).” According to Sandra, whether at the startup level or in a corporation, it's always a people business. This is why EQ is so valuable. She finds her way back to her roots recollecting the importance her family placed on respect and how she leveraged that in every aspect of her career. One of the cultural challenges she specifically faced was how to speak up to your boss especially because she was raised with the idea of never challenging her elders. She once got a coach to teach her how to have her voice heard without that internal tension. Sandra reinforces that one can have all the skills and intelligence, but "without humanity it’s easy to develop a toxic work culture where the work may get done but the negative effects on performance would also be apparent."
Today, Sandra continues her global relevant work with Intel after fifteen years and her advice to young women, especially Latinas, interested in the technology field is to prepare more than men as they’re already at a disadvantage. "Like we like to say in Latino culture, ‘si se puede’, you can achieve anything you want as long as you set your mind towards it and leverage one of the greatest strengths that our culture has to offer which is the power of hard work.”