10,000 Hispanic engineers are in Philly for a massive hiring fair

Carmen Mercado, a Comcast engineer, lives near the Convention Center, so she knows when the really big events are in town by the influx of people — often in matching shirts — who crowd the streets and her favorite places.

This week, however, Philadelphia is hosting a convention that she’s professionally ready for: the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, known as SHPE (colloquially, “Ship”).

Mercado and Amtrak program manager Moises Young, both past presidents of the Drexel’s SHPE chapter, are lifelong members and cochairs welcoming nearly 10,000 expected for the group’s annual convention and hiring fair Oct. 29 through Nov. 1.

“I can’t wait to show them Philadelphia. We in Philadelphia have so much to offer, such a strong, colorful culture of every culture,” said Mercado, who’s earning her master’s in systems engineering. “I’ll get everyone to eat at Reading Terminal. I have favorites at every place there. The churros at El Merkury are my guilty pleasure.”

Hundreds of science, technology, financial, manufacturing, distribution, and engineering employers will meet with prospective hires and interns, including Amazon, Apple, Bank of America, Boston Scientific, Caterpillar, Chevron, Delta, Ford, Honda, Intel, Merck, and Microsoft.

Among celebrities on the SHPE program will be Rickie Ricardo, a New Jerseyan familiar to Eagles and New York Yankees fans as a Spanish-language play-by-play commentator. His famous field-goal tagline is “Sí sennñor!”

“You don’t have to be Hispanic — or an engineer — to be a member, so long as you support our mission,” said Young, a New York native. “I’m also part of the American Society of Civil Engineers. As with SHPE, we are always trying to increase our numbers. The world needs more engineers.”

The number of Latinos earning master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering doubled in the 2010s to about 16% of the U.S. annual total, though as a group Latinos remain a smaller proportion of engineers than of the general population, according to National Science Foundation data.

Most of the hundreds of panelists are engineers and managers seeking to extend community and personal connections in professions that are sometimes outside students’ family and hometown experiences.

Mercado’s parents, who are Puerto Rican, encouraged her to study science and math when they saw her building LEGO bouquets. Her mother found a SHPE event on social media, and Mercado joined the chapter at Northern Burlington County Regional High. She got her first job at Raytheon in Boston through SHPE contacts and has helped others do the same at the last 10 SHPE conventions in California, Texas, and the Midwest.

Mercado, Young, and other locals will be joined by out-of-town SHPE leaders such as Gabriel Ruscalleda, who first visited Philadelphia as a mechanical engineering student on an Air Products internship he learned about as a SHPE member at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.

At a SHPE convention in Fort Worth, Texas, Ruscalleda landed an internship at Chevron, leading to field assignments and his current job as facilities engineer in Houston, specializing in rotating equipment compressors. He heads the Chevron chapter of SHPE because “we at Chevron believe in the SHPE mission to really empower the Hispanic community in STEM.”

For all the enthusiasm, it’s a smaller SHPE show this year. Last year 15,000 attended SHPE’s 50th anniversary hiring fair and convention in Anaheim, Calif. Some past sponsors, such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., aren’t on this year’s list.

“There’s definitely some drop-off in participation from companies,“ said Suzanna Valdez Wolfe, SHPE’s chief executive, citing economic reasons. “They are conveying to us that they will be back next year or the following year.”

She also notes that the Northeast, though home to diverse and growing Latino communities, is far from the larger Latino populations and SHPE’s biggest chapters in California, Texas, and Florida.

But SHPE is committed to rotating its annual event between regions. Recruiters as well as job hopefuls are traveling long distances to participate, and Valdez said they’ll be confirmed in the expectation “there is an internship or job waiting for them.”

Like the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, and other groups that seek to promote the profession among people who have been historically underrepresented, SHPE “welcomes all,” said Valdez Wolfe. “If you attend our conference, you see the diaspora of the Hispanic community, as well as representations of other nationalities and races.”

It’s not only about having a solid corporate job, said Isaac Rodriguez, SHPE’s board secretary, who joined SHPE in the 2000s at the University of Virginia and has since earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and founded Memphis-based SweetBio, a wound-care developer.

His message as a founder: “If the job you want isn’t out there, you can create it. We aren’t telling people to leave their Fortune 500 company jobs but to stay on top of industry trends and to start thinking like an entrepreneur. When you’re ready, we will be with you every step of the way.”

Rodriguez notes that through changing political currents, SHPE has worked since its 1974 founding “to build this pipeline of talent through our very wide range of ethnicities and every kind of diversity in our membership. Here, you can be yourself. Once you get involved, you find you have this innate need to give back. We aren’t going away.”

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Gabriel Ruscalleda’s name.