EP 121 | Angel Mendez, corporate board member and former c-suite executive

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Cloudcast and NSPN take you to a place where no podcast has gone before, The Center.

**Ruben Navarrette** (0:07)
Well, welcome back to Ruben In The Center, where we avoid the extremes in favor of nuance, honesty and common sense. I'm Ruben Navarrette, your host. I'm a writer, author, syndicated columnist, recovering radio talk show host, and TV commentator. I'm also the CEO and founder of the Navarrette the Sonic Podcast Network. I live here, right here in the middle of the road, where my goal isn't to make you angry, only to make you think. But I warn you from experience, having to think just might make you angry.
Well, today we've got a very special guest. He's a friend of mine, someone who I've met a while back, and he's got a lot to say about his experiences in corporate America and traveling the country and the world. His name is Angel Mendez. Angel Mendez. Let me just give you a quick background on my friend. He's a tech entrepreneur, corporate board member for various boards, has been for very many years. He's also a C-suite level executive. He's been a chief operating officer at major companies.
He was at Cisco Systems for 10 years as a senior VP in various capacities.
All this from his background growing up. He'll tell you a little bit about that, but he was also at Lafayette College where he studied to become an electrical engineer. And I'm always interested in how it is that my friends who started off as engineers ended up in the tech space and entrepreneurs and ultimately crossed over not doing engineering on a day-to-day basis, but I'm interested in how one gets from one place to another. Angel Mendez, thank you so much, my friend, for joining us here at Ruben In The Center.

**Angel Mendez** (1:36)
Thank you, Ruben. I'm very humbled by your invitation. I see the kinds of guests that you bring on. And last week or last month, rather, you had Alberto Gonzalez and people of that kind of import.

**Ruben Navarrette** (1:47)
Right.

**Angel Mendez** (1:48)
I'm very, very humbled to be here. Thank you.

**Ruben Navarrette** (1:50)
Well, thank you. It's my pleasure to have you. And I know that we get great feedback from our audience about the guests. In fact, I learned so much. I start off with, there's no agenda. There's no gotcha questions.
I don't know the answers to these questions. That's why I'm asking.
This is a storyteller podcast, so we would start off with the same question, and that is the story. I want to know the story of Angel Mendez, of where you grew up and how you grew up, and ultimately how that launched you into the life you've been living now.

**Angel Mendez** (2:20)
Sounds great. Let's dive in.

**Ruben Navarrette** (2:23)
Yep, tell me the Angel Mendez story.

**Angel Mendez** (2:26)
Great, well, born in Cuba, a great family that split up upon the reality of the Cuban Revolution and the advent of the Castro government.
I was born in 1960, if you know your history, Castro and the Revolution. I've been going on for a number of years, but it was 59 where things cemented in. And my father had his business taken away by the nationalizing of the industries in Cuba. And I come out of a very interesting family. On my mother's side, the family was very, very tight and remained so until they all passed on. On my father's side, however, the family split up.
He didn't like one of his brothers very much who became a very strong Castro sympathizer.
And as a result, I grew up in a house filled with very strong women because my mother and her two sisters were very much part of my life. We left Cuba and went to Miami as many Cubans did. Arrived there in 1963, remained there for a few years. And then my father was able to return to a lot of work he had been doing in Cuba, selling textiles primarily. And that allowed us to move to Puerto Rico. So I'm actually a Cuban-Rican. I lived in Puerto Rico through my high school years.
I tell my friends I like both black beans and red beans equally, but I identify very much as a Cuban. Grew up in a very Cuban family, Spanish grandparents.
My dad was, his education was, stopped formal education, stopped in the seventh grade. My mother in the eighth grade. So education matters a great deal to me. We can certainly talk about my involvement later in that, particularly in higher education, which I think is incredibly important as a sector of the world we live in. And I studied, the fortune really of going to a terrific school in San Juan. Academia Perpetuo Socorro is one of the best schools on the island and was run by Dora Don Nunes and Redentris Priest. And I grew up in a very, very good education center and sports centered environment. And that really shaped my thinking as I was going to college. My parents had never been through high school, never mind college, but they knew that a college education was important. I was very, very fortunate to land a full scholarship or nearly a full scholarship at Lafayette College. My focus in high school had always been on the sciences. Engineering was always something of interest. And I embarked on an electrical engineering major from day one at Lafayette in Pennsylvania.