Laura I. Gómez
Atipica
Palo Alto, CA USA
"Stay true and loyal to your potential—not anyone else’s but your own."
Career Roadmap
Laura I.'s work combines: Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Accomplishing Goals
See more careers and stories that connect to your interests.
Take Roadmap Quiz
Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Advice for getting started
Early in my life, the fear of getting caught and deported held me back from things. I had to remove my victimization and pursue things solely because I wanted to regardless of any consequences.
Here's the path I took:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Human Development and Family Studies, General
University of California-Berkeley
Graduate Degree
Latin American Studies
University of California-San Diego
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
Her family immigrated to America when she was eight years old and settled in the Silicon Valley area.
2.
She was an undocumented resident until she was 17, when she got her work permit; shortly afterwards, she got an internship with Hewlett Packard.
3.
No one at her internship looked like her, and she hated it; it made her want to stray away from tech.
4.
However, her mother—who’d come to the U.S. to make a better life for her children—saw that tech would be an incredible opportunity and pushed her daughter to continue.
5.
Determined not to let the industry make her into a victim, she decided she’d work in tech, “whether the industry embraced her or not.”
6.
Believes she made the right choice going forward with tech; now, years later, diversity is dominating the conversation in the industry.
7.
Since then, she’s worked at huge companies like Twitter and YouTube, helping them translate and localize their applications for a global audience.
8.
Her latest endeavor, Atipica, helps tech companies find and hire diverse candidates; says she’d rather fail trying to solve the problem of diversity in tech than to never tackle it.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Myself:
I don't want to be the victim of immigration services because I'm undocumented.
How I responded:
Early in my life, the fear of getting caught and deported held me back from things. I had to remove my victimization and pursue things solely because I wanted to regardless of any consequences.
Experiences and challenges that shaped me
I immigrated to the US when I was 8 years old. I was an undocumented resident until I was 17, when I got a work permit.
When I first got into the tech industry, I stood out because I was a woman and a minority. I was determined not to let the industry make me into a victim, I decided that I'd work in tech, whether the industry embraced me or not.