Breaking Into Tech Without a Degree: From Middle School Admin to Chief of Staff with Jazmin Diaz

Episode Information

Show Notes

Jazmin Diaz’s career story dismantles the myth that you need perfect credentials to succeed in technology. Her path from middle school administrative assistant to Chief of Staff at a cybersecurity company demonstrates how curiosity, authenticity, and strategic relationship-building can accelerate professional growth.

Episode Highlights:

Jazmin shares her unique background growing up between two cultures – born in California, raised in Mexico until age nine, then returning to relearn English and navigate American educational systems. This experience shaped her ability to connect with others facing similar challenges, particularly at-risk students during her time working in education.

The conversation reveals practical strategies for career transitions, including how she researched transferable skills, leveraged informational interviews, and ultimately secured her first tech role through networking rather than traditional applications. Her willingness to start as a receptionist – despite years of experience – proved essential for getting her foot in the door.

Key Takeaways:

• Networking authentically means building relationships without immediate agenda
• Being uncomfortable signals growth opportunities worth pursuing
• Self-advocacy requires data and strategic timing, not just confidence
• Starting at entry level in a new industry can fast-track learning and advancement
• Salary negotiation extends beyond base pay to stock options, bonuses, and benefits
• Vulnerability and authenticity create stronger professional connections than perfection

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: “Ignite Your Growth” by Jazmin Diaz (English)
• Book: “Enciende Tu Crecimiento” by Jazmin Diaz (Spanish)
• Flourish Learning and Development

Connect with Our Guest: Jazmin Diaz is available for speaking engagements, workshops, and coaching through Flourish Learning and Development. Her book is available in both English and Spanish editions.

About Career Downloads: Each episode features professionals sharing real experiences, setbacks, and breakthroughs to help you manage your own career with greater success. Host Manuel Martinez brings conversations that go beyond surface-level advice to uncover actionable insights you can apply immediately.

TranscriptionManuel Martinez: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to really uncover how they’ve managed their career over time with the ultimate goal to help you uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So I’m really excited for today’s episode. This has really been eight, almost nine months in the making. So for those of you who are aware, back in December, I had Cynthia Hara on and a mutual contact of my current guest and Cynthia’s kind of got in contact with me, put me in contact with Jazmin Diaz is who I have on. We’ve had a number of conversations since that time trying to work out, so she’s not local to Las Vegas, just trying to find out logistically how this would work out. And I’m really excited because apart from the alignment of what she’s currently doing, what she’s done, kind of what the podcast is, in between that time, she has also become an author and she’s written a book, both in English and in Spanish, again, around career and professional development and personal development. So I’m really excited and this is gonna be a great one. So with that, I will go ahead and introduce Jazmin Diaz.

Jazmin Diaz: Thank you so much for having me, Manny. Really glad to be here with you finally.

Manuel Martinez: Finally, right. I mean, it’s interesting that when Sal kind of put us in contact, it took us a little while. We’d look back and it’s almost nine months that this has gone on and I think it happened at this moment for a reason, right? Because it gave you the chance, we didn’t know at a time when we first met, but that you were gonna be writing a book.

Jazmin Diaz: Right, right. Yeah, no, I think things happen when they’re supposed to and I very much agree for this instance specifically. So since you and I spoke, yeah, was able to get the English version out of my book, “Ignite Your Growth”, in March of 2025 and the Spanish version “Enciende Tu Crecimento” literally just launched earlier this week on August 20th.

Manuel Martinez: Right. So for those that may not be aware of who you are, if you don’t mind just telling us kind of what your current role is and some of the responsibilities associated with that.

Jazmin Diaz: Sure, sure. So I’m currently working in the tech space in a cybersecurity company in the capacity of a chief of staff role for the global customer services team. Our headquarters are located in San Francisco. And in addition to that, I run my own company. So I am CEO and founder of Flourish Learning and Development. And it’s really a company that’s dedicated towards helping individuals unlock their potential, whether it’s through coaching, through speaking engagements or workshops, and now leveraging the book as well as a tool. So I do that as well on the side. And a mother of four children and never a dull moment in my life. So grateful and blessed and a lot to juggle all the time.

Manuel Martinez: Oh, I bet. I know that we’ve had similar conversations, having family and career as much as we say at times, like, oh, we’re able to separate them. I mean, they intertwine.

Jazmin Diaz: They do, absolutely.

Manuel Martinez: So now if you don’t mind kind of going back a little bit and telling me about where you grew up and then eventually kind of– we’ll get into it because you didn’t get into technology right away into the tech industry, but just kind of what kind of started your career. We’ll go that route.

Jazmin Diaz: Yeah, so I’ll take it back to somewhat the beginning. So I was born in California, a city called Mountain View. And I was a product of a teenage mom, a teenage mother. And so I was raised by her and my grandparents. So early on in my life, we moved to Mexico, to a town called Degollado, Jalisco. And I grew up there for the first nine years of my life. So I was attending school regularly, living, breathing the culture every day, which I love, and just traditions and family values, community, learn how to read, write, speak, fluent Spanish during those years. And then my grandparents made the decision to come back to California. So moved back to California around the age of nine, got into the school system here, which was really challenging for me, because I had pretty much lost my English. I remember while I was being raised in Mexico, one of my aunts would send me videos of Care Bears, Rainbow Bright, Brady Bunch, different shows to try to kind of keep that English in my speaking abilities. And while it helped, it wasn’t enough. When we came back, I was in ESL classes. So English as a second language, how to relearn everything, the systems, the norms, cultural nuances that were different. And for a nine-year-old, I remember struggling to navigate a lot of that stuff. And so thankfully, it turned out pretty well. I was able to manage and finish high school. And then my husband and I, we were 18 when we got married. And by no means was there any roadmap or plan of, these are our goals. This is what we’re going to do by this date or anything like that. We just knew we wanted to be together and raise a family. And so, yeah, fast forward. We got married. We had children. And I was working at a local middle school in our neighborhood. And it was really a wonderful job for a lot of reasons. So I worked in the office as a admin assistant, school operations. And it was quite fulfilling because I didn’t just order supplies or help with attendance and budget management and all those things. I was able to intentionally create space to have conversations with the students. These were middle school kids. And they were kids who were labeled at risk. And what I mean by that is kids that are typically growing up in neighborhoods where it’s rough. It’s the hood or gang activity, single moms, parents working multiple jobs, perhaps not attended to as much as other children. So for me, these were really opportunities in my day to day to have conversations with these kids to try to change their stories, outlooks, perspectives, based on what I had experienced as also being labeled at risk at one point in my life. So that job, in addition to allowing me to connect with these young people and make a positive impact, it also gave me the flexibility that I needed as a mom to spend time with the kids. And what I mean by that is that the schedule was summers off, holiday, recess, winter break, spring break. As much as I would have loved to be a stay-at-home mom to be with my kids full time, this was the next best thing. It allowed us to be financially stable, to give them all the things that we wish we would have experienced or had– after school activities, sports, travel, whatever that was. That was definitely something that was top of mind and a priority for my husband and I both. So that job was amazing. It was great. It was fulfilling, impact, purpose, all the things when you think about the ideal job. However, me being me, there was a point where I knew I wanted more and I knew that I was capable of more. And I referenced not having a roadmap or a five-year plan. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. It was just finish high school