by Esther J. Cepeda
José de la Isla
Almost everyone dislikes stereotypes, but there are some similarities, some characteristics so strong, that it’s fair to say they generalize for all age groups across Hispanic culture, Latin American countries, and socio-economic strata. That one is love of family. A few will roll their eyes at this old saw, but some stereotypes really hold true.
Try this experiment for yourself: next time you’re with a group that has a Latino in it, ask members of the group what they would do if they won a million bucks.
I can almost guarantee you the Hispanic will be the one to say without hesitation, “Buy my parents a house.”
George Burciaga, a Chicago kid from the Pilsen district who has hit it big – is no different.
He was brought to my attention as a “aaahh, life as it should be” subject because his wildly successful Chicago-based tech boutique, smarTECHS.net (http://smartechs.net/)is not a “successful Hispanic business.” It’s a successful business which happens to be Latino-owned.
This month George is being honored as Illinois’ Small Business Person of the Year — and not for nothin’, either. He leads a team of 24 tech wizards of all races, ethnicities and backgrounds in a 10-year-old, $9 million venture that offers Information Technology services to businesses all over the country. He launched it out of his two-room apartment as a 23-year-old.
“I started off consulting as an intern at a financial institute, and one day I asked my boss: ‘If I came in as a business would you hire me?’ He said ‘yes’ and a week later I walked into his office with my incorporation papers and he allowed me the opportunity.”
It took Burciaga, now 33, all of two seconds to tell me why he even dreamed of getting into technology – a fi eld well-known to be seriously in need of qualified Latinos – and why he decided to take the risk of being a business owner.
“It had nothing to do with technology! I was raised in Pilsen by my grandparents who were very poor, and my entire goal was to move them out of their neighborhood.Pilsen at the time was not the Pilsen we know now – my uncle was shot in the street,” Burciaga said. “I saw my grandparents taking a beating by working two jobs and dealing with the drugs and violence. I simply saw the technology niche, which wasn’t oversaturated, as the opportunity.” Niche?
“Well, at the time there weren’t a whole lot of IT companies, not even just by Latinos, back then (the late ’90s) it was a fresh, new, cutting-edge market. Today I’m trying to build the Latino growth within IT, it’s very low, as it was then, but we’re a great fi rm that happens to be Latino, not a Latino firm that became great. I never leveraged that and said, ‘Hey, I’m Hispanic.’ I kicked the door open and I do a hell of a job.”
Indeed, he’s done such a good job that in April of this year he fi nished second in the National Small Business Person of the Year competition, which came with a trip to Washington, D.C., and dinner with President Bush. (“He congratulated me and then gave a really long speech on the importance of small business to the country.”)
Now that smarTECHS.net is a resounding success and the grandparents got their dream home, George is off to open opportunities for other kids to follow in his footsteps.
“We’re launching ‘smarTECHS on Campus’ at Robert Morris College this fall. We’re creating IT residents who train like doctors do in a hospital. We’ll be opening a 3,000-square-foot facility on campus where the kids will train, then they’ll come to us for 10-12 weeks and we’ll fi ll their skill gap before they leave school by putting them right in the line of real fire with real clients who will participate. It’s an opportunity to connect people and actually bring technology into the community; I’m so excited about it.”
I’m sure his family is thrilled, too. Hispanic Link.
(Based in Chicago, journalist Esther J. Cepeda self-syndicates two columns weekly. She is a director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Reach her care of www.600words.com). ©2008
