The American Dream with Elias Torres Elias Torres

From thinking she wanted to be an athletic trainer freshman year of college to graduating with a bachelors (and masters) degree in information systems, Deena McKay, scrum master and host of Black Tech Unplugged podcast, is no stranger to the nonlinear trajectory of tech careers. In this episode of The American Dream podcast, Deena and Elias discuss the role of a scrum master, Elias argues if it’s really worthwhile, and the two agree on the need for adaptability and flexibility when paving your way into tech.
Check out Black Tech Unplugged, a podcast focused on telling the stories of Blacks in Tech to assist you with developing your own tech path, anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Elias shares a conversation with his mother, Consuelo Rios.

We're continuing Women's History Month with La Jefa herself, Enna Jimenez. Emma immigrated from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts with her family as a young girl, became a first-generation college graduate, and paved her way into Vice President positions in quality assurance.

Within the first few minutes of the episode, you'll understand why Emma is La Jefa, but make sure to listen to the end to find out how she fought for her position in corporate America, and learn how you can, too!

To kick off Women's History Month, we're highlighting one of Elias Torres' role models: Freada Kapor Klein.
Freada has considered herself an activist since high school, and since then, she's founded SMASH — an organization that helps low-income students get into STEM, co-founded Kapor Capital, which invests in early-stage startups focused on closing the equity gap, and even wrote a book all about what it takes for companies to actually close the equity gap.
In this episode of The American Dream podcast, Freada and Elias discuss how technology and activism can (and should) co-exist, the problems prohibiting equality today, and debate if we really are making progress closing the equity gap.

We're changing things up this week!

Today, Harvard University juniors Hannah Zhou and Rhea Acharya join Elias on the show to discuss the upcoming Harvard WeCode Conference happening on February 17 and 18.

Register for the conference or learn about sponsorship opportunities here: https://www.harvardwecode.com/

Growing up in Colorado, Guillermo Diaz Jr. always dreamed of having palm trees in his backyard. Now, after many years of hard work and diligence, he has more palm trees than he knows what to do with, which is why he created Conectado.

Conectado aims to leverage technology to bring individuals and institutions together to increase equality from the classroom to the boardroom.

In this episode of The American Dream podcast, Guillermo explains how he worked to achieve his palm tree dream, why he believes so strongly in "ships," and why he shifted his focus from Cisco to Conectado.