SHPE E-board and panelists (left to right) Adina Rivera and Lilybeth Delgado at the SHPEtinas networking event.
SAMANTHA ARIAS / SHPE TREASURER
Angelina Persaud, Senior Writer
The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) chapter at Manhattan University hosted a Women in STEM alumni panel to highlight the achievements of Hispanic women in the field.
The panelists in attendance included Adina Rivera ‘19, ‘21, a deputy project manager at HDR, and Lilybeth Delgado ‘19, a design technologist for Amazon Ads.
The discussion began with panelists explaining some of the biggest challenges that come with being a Hispanic woman in a male dominated industry, and how they have empowered themselves and others in overcoming it.
“I think one of the challenges for women or anyone is to unblock yourself from the stereotypes,” Delgado said. “For example, for me and one of my colleagues, she’s not Hispanic, she’s Italian, but we both have an accent. So we always talk about things like, ‘maybe I didn’t communicate right because of my accent’. But as long as you’re using the proper language and you’re articulate, be confident in your potential.”
Rivera and Delgado also noted how they try to bring their cultural values into the workplace as a way to showcase their roots and take pride in their work.
Rivera noted that she chose to major in civil engineering at MU after visiting her family in the Dominican Republic and seeing the houses built on cinder blocks with tin roofs and a lack of running water in certain areas.
“I feel like I’m bringing my culture to the workplace when I talk about myself,” Rivera said. “I talk about my family, I bring a different kind of passion that other people don’t have. Why I wanted to become an engineer had to do with the fact that my family came from the Dominican Republic. When I visited them and went to ‘el campo’, I would see how people were living, and noticed they didn’t have anything like we have here. They have cinder blocks and an aluminum roofing. I bring that passion to my workplace that other people may not have. They probably just want to be an engineer because they thought it was good money or security, whereas I have an actual, personal passion for it.”
Delgado, who has Mexican-American roots, explained how her culture has led her to having family-oriented values and discussed how it translated into her building connections with her co-workers.
“I think that we have a different point of view, where we can incorporate new ideas into whatever’s happening in projects, initiatives, and marketing,” Delgado said. “In my perspective, being Hispanic means we’re very family oriented, so I just find the things that I hold strong to my core, which is, I value my time with my family. There’s things that you can find in common with your colleague. I don’t watch American football, so I can’t really talk about something like football, but I could talk about family time or finding those common areas.”
Rivera and Delgado also commented on hardships they’ve faced in the workplace and how they had to rely on their own confidence and problem-solving abilities to get through their projects.
“Recently, I got dropped out of some meetings because a project got switched to a new owner, and so they dropped certain people from the project, but I was one of the leads in the decision making,” Delgado said. “I didn’t find it fair that the project was kept going without my involvement. I felt I still needed to be there. I took it up first with the person owning the project. I started at the micro [level], because I don’t like confrontation. And if things just stay there, then I take it a level up.”
Rivera commented on her hardship at a construction site for a project she was involved in.
“I remember when I would go on site, they would purposely forget my name every week, as if they didn’t see me every week,” Rivera said. “Especially being a woman in construction, and the only Hispanic in the room. I would reintroduce myself every single time that I saw them. It’s easy to take it to a place where it could be rude, but you want to always be professional. Especially in engineering, there’s going to be some tricky situations, and it’s good to hold your composure in those situations. They don’t want to see you overreact. They want to see you maintain that calmness and find the solution for every problem.”
Rivera and Delgado offered words of support for other Hispanic women who wish to embrace their roots and find strength in each other even if they are seen as the minority group. They emphasized that a good support system coupled with showcasing your true personality is the key to being successful in any industry regardless of your background.
“They’re never going to see me in a different type of way other than me being positive or engaging in a positive way, because that’s how I was raised,” Rivera said. “A part of our industry, people are going to be leaning on AI a little bit more for assistance in their work. But at the end of the day, you need to show them that you’re irreplaceable. And how do you show somebody that you’re irreplaceable at your job? You don’t want to just be a number, you want to be somebody that they connect with and that they can learn from, and that they see as an actual leader and has a presence.”
Delgado echoed a similar sentiment about finding the people who will support you the most in being the most authentic version of yourself.
“In tech and engineering, there’s not a lot of women, so it might be a little bit harder, and this is a little bit too bold, because sometimes I feel like some women haven’t had my back and some men have had my back,” Delgado said. “So just find who’s in your corner and then talk through these problems.”
Megan Ardiles, a junior civil engineering major and vice president of SHPE, explained how the insight of the panelists encouraged her to be more authentic when interviewing for positions and to lean more into connecting with other SHPE members.
“I feel like when I started interviewing last year, I was very robotic,” Ardiles said. “I would just pitch myself and go straight to the STAR method. I hated how I sounded, because I didn’t even sound like a person. When I went to the SHPE conference, you had a lot more interviews, and you’re talking to a lot of people. At the point that you’re just like, ‘I don’t want to talk about the script anymore’.”
Kacy Angamarca, a senior civil engineering major and fundraising coordinator of SHPE, spoke about how the panelists’ discussion about how they handle rejection resonated with him and how it inspired him to move forward.
“They taught me that rejection, instead of losing your energy, you should see that as motivation,” Angamarca said. “I can relate to that, because that happened to me in the past. I’m currently a senior, I already have a job after graduation. But when I was a freshman, I always saw my friends getting internships, and I didn’t have the same luck. I remember my rejection, but looking back, like I mentioned, those rejections could seem like more motivation because from there you can improve.”