Carla Rodriguez: Empowering Change in the LatinX Community

Each year, the Hispanic IT Executive Council (HITEC) spotlights the US’ most esteemed Hispanic technology executives, inspiring future tech leaders and championing equity. Among them stands recent HITEC 100 Awardee, Carla Rodriguez, a driving force within Intel for over 17 years. Beginning as a Senior Financial Analyst in 2006, she’s worked through many experiences to now stand as the Client Computing Group’s Vice President, and General Manager of the Commercial Client Ecosystem. However, Carla's journey is not just one of career evolution; it's a narrative of empowerment and transformation proving every moment is the right moment for change.

Right out of college, Carla was on a mission to achieve her dreams, she was advancing in her career at a Fortune 500 company, for four years, and she realized if she didn’t pause at that point in her career, she never would. So, in 2001, she finally mustered up the courage and left the corporate world to do what she always wanted to do: serve in the Peace Corps. With a deep interest in the Eastern European region and history, Carla was assigned to Constanta, Romania and took no time in making a change. One program in particular, Girl Leadings Our World (GLOW) defined most of her time. Focused on leadership empowerment, Carla saw the first-hand impact of scaling wisdom and self-confidence in a group and knew then that she wanted her work to be bigger than herself by unlocking others’ potential.

After 2 years in service, Carla returned to the US on a new leadership path and went on to graduate from the Thunderbird School of Management, landing a finance position at Intel. For little over 10 years, Carla commits to building her financial acumen as she goes from Financial Analyst to Manger to Controller, but while doing so she finds a love for the products and the people behind the tech. With good support and intuition, in 2017, she makes the big transition from finance whiz to PC business expert as Director and Technical Advisor to Client Computing Group’s former Vice President, and never looks back.

Through her journey she’s not only gained insight into conscious leadership but a sense of community and purpose. She took up space and knew she wanted to give back and share this knowledge. As today’s CCG Latinx Leadership Council lead, she advocates for inclusion and empowerment as her experiences abroad and Intel have shown her. Outside of work, she’s a mother of two, a small business owner, and long-time contributor at Adelante Mujeres, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on building a more just society by empowering Latinas to lead.  “I am so proud to see the accomplishments of our Hispanic Technology Executives that are driving change and innovation in their organizations,” said HITEC Board Chair Rosa Ramos-Kwok. "The HITEC 100 recipients are ‘el orgullo’ of our community.” With this, Carla continues to keep change at the forefront of what she does and is committed to inspiring the next generation of LatinX to dream big and act bigger.