Carlos Vasquez was born in Mexico and moved to Milwaukee at age seven. After high school, he worked in a factory for two years before quitting to pursue an interest in technology.
But he didn't know where to turn. He searched online for local meetups and attended one that wasn't a fit.
Eventually, Vasquez found i.c.stars, a local program that provided technical training and a software development internship. That led him to his current role as a full-stack engineer at Northwestern Mutual.
At i.c.stars, Vasquez met Benjamin Juarez, who at the time worked as a technology training manager for the organization. Juarez, whose parents were refugees from El Salvador, became a mentor to Vasquez.
"He was the first Latino person I met in tech," Vasquez said. "He kind of just guided me when I started."
Now, Juarez and Vasquez are the co-founders of Latinos in Tech, a group focused on creating professional development opportunities in the community to encourage others like them. The group recently announced upcoming events including an Agile workshop and a Wix web development workshop.
The title of the new event series — Nahui Ahtle, which means "40" in the indigenous central Mexican and El Salvadoran language of Nahuatl — is a way of paying homage to their ancestors, Juarez said. Each workshop is 40 minutes in length.
Through Latinos in Tech, Juarez and Vasquez also plan to hold office hours to make themselves available to people in the community who are interested in starting or advancing a career in technology. Their goal is to provide a service that wasn't available to them when they were starting out.
"We just want to connect people," Juarez said. "We want to help in any way we can in terms of professional development."
Like Vasquez, Juarez also took an unconventional route to the technology field. He has a master's degree in public policy and previously had a career in public policy analysis. At age 30, he decided he wanted to channel his love of video games into learning how to code.
A self-taught software developer, Juarez eventually got the job with i.c.stars. He's now the chief technology officer of the Milwaukee startup Like|Minded, which is building a platform to facilitate connections within organizations through an intelligent matching algorithm.
Juarez, who was among the Milwaukee Business Journal's 40 under 40 winners in 2018, is also the founder of Cream City Coders, which provides software development services while teaching central city students to code. Vasquez, one of this year's 40 Under 40 winners, is also the founder of Habla Code, which offers free online web development tutorials in Spanish.
Latinos in Tech started in 2019 and has held several events since then, including an Hour of Code event in December 2020, which taught Python to students at Milwaukee's Carmen Schools of Science and Technology. The event was in partnership with American Family Insurance and Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee.
Looking ahead, Juarez and Vasquez hope to connect with other Latinos in Tech groups around the country.
