Aristeo Hernandez

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aristeohs/

Instagram: steo_

I was born in Mexico. My mother brought me to the US when I was a baby. My father passed when I was eleven months old, and my mother was searching for a better life near her family in California. The Bay Area and the US became the home I grew to love. I found out at thirteen I was undocumented. After having different jobs that I needed to help pay the electricity and water bill in high school, I noticed people like me didn't get much opportunity. The only difference between the other undocumented immigrants and me was that I wasn't an adult. I was determined to fight the status quo. I was laser-focused on my grades. I was awarded the Hurtado Scholarship at Santa Clara University. The scholarship was the most defining point in my life because it afforded me the type of financial stability that only the wealthy afford in America during their college years. I didn't have to work to live for the first time in my life. I learned to love what made me unique and was able to develop the academic I always was. My major was business and finance. It was a journey, but I became legal and was able to dream again. I have enjoyed working at well-known bay area tech companies in my ten years of professional experience. For the last six years, I have worked in fintech managing $1billion+ in payment transactions monthly for PayPal's remittance product Xoom. Two years ago, I set sail to my dream of becoming an MBA. I persevered through the pandemic, and I graduated in May 2020.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?: My idea of perfect happiness involves everyone I love and myself having good health, financial stability, and a job they enjoy.

Which living person do you most admire?: The living person I admire the most is my mother. Her positive outlook in life and her ability to help others in her community with love continues despite living through a lot of adversity. I admire people who can heal from hardships and continue teaching people how to love through their actions.

What is your greatest extravagance?: My gay-brown-voice is my greatest extravagance. I hid my gayness from myself and others for too many years, and I didn't fully love and embrace my brown skin until I was an adult in college. When I learned to love those parts of myself, they became my extravagance.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?: I would change my inability to do well in standardized tests. Our society focuses so much on standardized testing, and I not very good at it. I have failed tests in my life where I spent months studying a couple of hours daily. I had to try that much harder on every assignment during school because I knew my grade would most likely drop after I took the final exam.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?: My education is my greatest achievement. My long-term dream is to retire into teaching at a Jesuit university. There aren't many Latino college professors in business school, and one day I want to represent my community in higher education.