Skip to main content

Hispanic Heritage Month: Most influential Latinas in tech

Each year, Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated in the United States, beginning on September 15 and ending on October 15. Established in 1968, the celebration seeks to recognize the contributions and achievements of the Latin American community in this country.

At Digital Trends, we want to highlight those Latinas who have an important influence on the technology sector.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2020
To celebrate the contributions and influence of Hispanic Americans to the cultural, historical, and technological achievements of the United States, Digital Trends has put together this collection of exclusive features and in-depth reporting from our industry-leading Digital Trends Español team — translated for your convenience, of course. SEE MORE
Hispanic Heritage Month

Diana Trujillo, from NASA

Aerospace engineer Diana Trujillo always wanted to be part of NASA and she succeeded. Since her childhood in Cali, Colombia, she dreamed of reaching the stars, and now she is part of Mars 2020. She works with the group that designed and examined the robotic arm and two instruments for the mission, which seeks to demonstrate whether there was life on the red planet. She has been a member of the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Brenda Salinas, from Google

She defines herself as “regio-montana” by birth, but Texan by choice. The truth is that Salinas is committed to building a media landscape in which every woman of color has the power to tell her story. She helped relaunch NPR’s Latino USA as a full hour program and is currently a Google audio content strategist.

Kety Esquivel, from McCarson Consulting

She strongly believes in the good that technology can bring to the world. The daughter of a Guatemalan mother and a Mexican father, she considers herself an American, Guatemalan, Mexican, and Latina. She has a consulting business, and in her previous role as vice president of marketing and communications at AnitaB.org, she empowered women to use technology as a means to achieve representation for the majority of the population. We invite you to read the interview with her about her previous role at AnitaB.org.

Lilian Rincón, from Google

Of Venezuelan origin, she is the leader of Google Assistant, where she manages the team that creates new features and functions for this platform. When she was nine years old, her family decided to move from Venezuela to Canada; she did not speak English, so she could not talk to many people at school, however, she found a kind of universal language in mathematics. Focused on the technology industry and always versed in artificial intelligence and machine learning, she previously spent six years at Skype.

Nina Vaca, from Pinnacle Group

Born in Ecuador, since she was a child she realized how technology completely changed the business of her immigrant parents, who had started it when they arrived in the United States. Since then, she understood that technology was an ally of progress. For 24 years, she built her empire, Pinnacle Group, one of the largest Latino companies in the country. Throughout her life, she has promoted education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through scholarships and programs, which can benefit Hispanics in Dallas, Texas, and children in her native Ecuador.

Angeles Elena Van Ryzin, from Kia

Originally from Zacatecas, Mexico, Van Ryzin was one of the women responsible for the Kia Telluride. Her work consisted of achieving the vehicle’s ease of driving and fuel efficiency. She earned a professional degree in Mechanical Engineering and is passionate about the subject of mobility. “Being a woman is not a limitation to do any work,” is one of the ideas she promotes. She also feels great satisfaction when the SUV, which she helped develop, is on the streets of the United States.

Sandra L. Rivera, from Intel

Hispanic Sandra L. Rivera, vice president of personnel at Intel Corporation, is responsible for driving better business results through a culture that embraces diversity and inclusion. Before assuming her current position, she led the Network Platforms Group and was one of the leaders in making the 5G network a reality in Intel’s plans. The Colombian-rooted executive has done much to make connectivity faster and more efficient.

Blanca Treviño, from Softtek

She was ranked by Forbes magazine as “one of the 10 most powerful women in Mexico”. Looking at her record, it is not difficult to understand why. She is the founder and president of Softtek since 2000, a Mexican information technology company that has grown exponentially under her leadership. The firm is present in four continents and has 12,000 employees.

Ana Corrales, from Google

She is the director of consumer hardware operations at Google, where she oversees the detailed development and delivery process for products such as the Pixel 4 phone and Nest Mini speakers. Recently, she supported many of the company’s community efforts in response to COVID-19. She is originally from Costa Rica.

Edaena Salinas, from Microsoft

Originally from Monterrey, Mexico, Edaena Salinas has been a software engineer at Microsoft since 2014. She also created The Women in Tech Show, a podcast about what we work on, not what it feels like to be a woman in technology,” and in which she has developed — through interviews with different leaders — topics such as technology, science, research, and entrepreneurship. She strongly believes that Latinas should explore careers in science and technology because it opens many doors.

 Rocío van Nierop, from Latinas in Tech

Co-founder of the Latinas in Tech project and former Director of Product Marketing at Prezi, she has been an advocate for technological inclusion. Latinas in Tech aims precisely at connecting, supporting, and empowering Latina women working in the technology industry, so she works hand in hand with leading firms to create safe spaces for learning, mentoring, and recruiting. Van Nierop has Mexican parents, grew up in Mexico, Germany, France, and Boston, and enjoys extreme sports.

Victoria Montenegro Caspe
Victoria is a professional English-Spanish translator, with more than seven years of experience. She has a university degree…
Skype now supports 911 calls in the U.S.
iPhone with the Skype mobile app loading screen.

Skype has updated its mobile and desktop apps to allow emergency calling in the U.S. for the first time in its 18-year history. Calls to 911 are also possible via Skype’s web-based service, notes for the recently released Skype 8.80 showed.

Emergency calling from Skype could come in handy if you find yourself in a tricky situation without a phone but have a computer close by, or if phone lines are down but you can get online.

Read more
The Interplanetary File System: How you’ll store files in the future
Cloud storage for downloading an isometric. A digital service or application with data transmission. Network computing technologies. Futuristic Server. Digital space. Data storage. Vector illustration.

When you upload a file or send a tweet, your information is stashed in some corporation-owned mega data center in the middle of nowhere. The endless racks of computers in these facilities hold millions of ledgers, and with a flick of a switch, companies can censor or misuse the data.

But what if instead of handing it to, say Amazon or Google, your data is broken down into pieces and scattered across the globe so that no one except you and your key -- not even the government -- can access it?

Read more
The best hurricane trackers for Android and iOS in 2022
Truck caught in gale force winds.

Hurricane season strikes fear into the hearts of those who live in its direct path, as well as distanced loved ones who worry for their safety. If you've ever sat up all night in a state of panic for a family member caught home alone in the middle of a destructive storm, dependent only on intermittent live TV reports for updates, a hurricane tracker app is a must-have tool. There are plenty of hurricane trackers that can help you prepare for these perilous events, monitor their progress while underway, and assist in recovery. We've gathered the best apps for following storms, predicting storm paths, and delivering on-the-ground advice for shelter and emergency services. Most are free to download and are ad-supported. Premium versions remove ads and add additional features.

You may lose power during a storm, so consider purchasing a portable power source,  just in case. We have a few handy suggestions for some of the best portable generators and power stations available. 

Read more