El Centro High School Alumnus Humberto Rincon Featured in 1st Book on Latino Innovation

Nov. 18, 2011 - PRLog -- El Centro City, CA (November 18, 2011)—Humberto Rincon, 1974 graduate of El Centro High School, started working when he was nine years old, in the fields of the Imperial Valley with his family. By his senior year in high school, he had secured a steady job for himself at a shoe store and was in line to be its next manager.  Today, he’s working on engineering energy efficiency improvements for large, industrial lighting systems. He has held numerous senior positions with organizations like IBM and Seagate Technologies.  Rincon’s childhood creativity, rooted in community examples of reuse of almost everything in the migrant camp that was home, laid the foundation for his current innovation focus.  

Rincon’s journey caught the eye of author Graciela Tiscareño-Sato, who wrote Latinnovating:  Green American Jobs and the Latinos Creating Them.  She wanted to tell his story, and was honored to tell the world about this role model.  “Why Humberto has chosen to apply his engineering talent to innovate in the green economy can be traced back to his childhood in Imperial Valley. Here he learned to use scarce resources efficiently and to work to create better solutions with those resources. He is improving and re-engineering our nation’s inefficient industrial warehouse lighting,” wrote Tiscareño-Sato.

Rincon holds a Bachelor of Science in both Mechanical Engineering and Material Science from UC Davis. He also received his Master in Mechanical Engineering Design, along with executive post-graduate training, from Stanford University on a full scholarship from IBM.  His solid work ethic, developed as a child, has served him well his entire life.  When he first attended college, he struggled at first with some of his classes. Because of this struggle, he had the idea to create a society still in place at Davis today—CALESS (Chicano and Latino Engineers and Scientists), which unites students studying these disciplines and enables them to help one another academically. Over time, he would also organize the first ever Latino engineering and science symposium at the university and develop a network across academic and Latino communities.

Latinnovating was recently launched at the Silicon Valley Latino Leadership Summit.  Prior to its release, the book received congressional attention, due to its unique focus.  It has been endorsed by more than two dozen individuals throughout the social justice, educational and environmental communities.

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Lynette Hoy, PR and Media Liaison
O:  (510) 814-8325/ lynette@gracefullyglobal.com

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About Gracefully Global Group, LLC: Gracefully Global Group is a full service publisher and marketing/communications excellence firm. Our mission is to create compelling, culturally-relevant content to inform, inspire and motivate people into action. See http://www.latinnovating.com for more information on book and its author, Graciela Tiscareño-Sato.