My Life Story

This article was originally posted on my personal blog the 8th of April 2020 - visit mmoscosa.com for more info.

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Recently I was applying for a position at one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the world. Unfortunately I did not get the job but the recruitment process taught me a lot about myself. 

As I was preparing for one of the interviews, I had to talk about my life story and what had made me who I am now; it is more difficult than one would think but it got me going. Having done this experiment I thought it would be a good idea to share with “the internet” and share a little bit more of my life story.

I was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco this in Mexico; thanks to my father’s (geologist) profession we had to move around quite a lot. And that is how it all takes place.

Childhood

I grew up in various cities in Mexico, more specifically Guadalajara and Hermosillo. I did spend a year or so in Tucson, Arizona in the USA; when it was time to go back to Mexico, our plans changed and ended up moving to San Juan, Argentina.

One day as I was planning my year had planned computer lessons, football classes, etc. my dad came and asked me to start looking for housing and schooling in Arequipa. I was 13 or 14 at the time and had no idea what Arequipa was, it turned out it is a city in Peru and we were moving there in less than a month. While in Peru after my last year of high-school I got selected to do my A level studied in Bishop Wordsworth Grammar School (this in Salisbury, England — UK). After I finished and went back to rejoin with my family, however, my trip back was no longer to Peru as now they were living in Santiago, Chile.

Living in different countries allowed me to have an open mind as well as to become adaptable to new environments and situations. 

I am very fortunate to have met and learned so much from Lidia Medina, Lord Byron school owner; Shadowed her and saw how she converted a private school into one of the top schools in the country.

While I was living in Peru I always wanted to hike to the top of one of the city volcanoes — Misti 5,825 mts (19,111 feet) — but I never did, it was a feat that I was always going to do “the next weekend”; it was until I decided to go back to Peru as a tourist that I decided it couldn't wait for “that next weekend”, hence taking my backpack and went full on to conquering the Volcano. 

Not only this taught me to go and do the things you want to do because it is easy to put excuses, but it also taught me about perseverance and believing in myself.

University 

From a young age, I knew I wanted to study computer science at Tec de Monterrey. As I mentioned above, I did my A levels in England and I was allowed to attend to some of the best Universities, unfortunately as an oversea student the fees were 10x more than normal (plus cost of living). This is why I decided to continue with my plan to study at the best university in Mexico. 

Fun fact, when I joined the program, the school decided to close the program of Computer Science claiming that there was not enough interest, I was the last ISC (Computer Science Engineer for its acronym in spanish)student at Tec de Monterrey. Every semester I had to sign a letter were I was complying to the classes I was taking were the last time that were going to be taught, if I failed the classes I had to change to another program (talk about stress).

By helping others I became part of the organizing committee for CISC the biggest Computer Science conference at Tec de Monterrey with over 900 attendees; I managed to invite Richard Stallman as Keynote Speaker. I also had the opportunity to become a student volunteer for OOPSLA in Montreal which got me one of the best experiences during my undergrad studies.

During my undergrad studies, I made a lot of great friends and encounter a lot of role models. One that stands out is the current vice-chancellor for Yucatan Polytechnic University, maybe something that Gildardo Sanchez-Ante is unaware of, but his passion for education and innovation as well as his characteristic humble approach makes him someone that inspired on my follow up actions after my undergrad studies.

As I was getting more and more involved in extra-curricular activities (Linux User Group, CISC Conference, OOPSLA etc) there was a particular activity that taught me to focus and keep calm in the most stressful situations; It was through Archery that I took in one of my hobbies seriously to the point of getting me to grasp the opportunity to participate at one of the World Tournaments in Guadalajara — Versus 2009 — . I remember practicing over six hours a day prior to this tournament. I had the opportunity to not only compete against the top archers in the world(Dave Cousins, Liam Grimwood, Martin and Erika Dambso, among others)in the world but also made good friends. 

Tec the monterrey lives by the values of entrepreneurship and I was one of the first generations to be in the incubator the campus had just implemented. 

There I established my first company (Websys) before graduating, a software development company where I built projects for companies such as Hershey’s and Logistics companies.

Postgraduate

After graduating, I had my own startup and things were going great; however there was a great lesson: I soon learned that when you are programming and something is not working as you expected is most likely you are doing something wrong. When dealing with other human beings, it is totally different, one could take the same approach over and over with the same person and have different outcomes (there are a lot of variables that come into play). 

This is why I decided to study a master at St Andrews University among the top 10% of global educational institutions recognized among Cambridge and Oxford and top in management and IT. 

Because of my background and the way I grew up, I decided to focus my dissertation on distributed work with multicultural teams. Something that at the time was just beginning to take traction only with bigger companies; now something I believe it is a must with any company regardless of its size.

Once I finished my studies at St Andrews University, I was invited to work for Stirling Council; here I was able to outperform in my professional endeavors at rapidly growing and developing in my role. I then had the opportunity to move to Hong Kong as I was then working as a Project Manager for CakeDC a global development team — the experts behind CakePHP — . After Hong Kong, I then moved to Moscow, Russia where I provided aid as consultant in the tech industry.

Having excelled in these endeavors spoke of the level of professionalism and ability to perform in the most strict business ecosystems. Something I was extremely proud of.

Back to Mexico

After coming back to Guadalajara, I was able to see how much the ecosystem had changed in the past years. “The Silicon Valley of Mexico” was how people were calling Guadalajara; however I saw a need for startups to raise and kickstart. This is why I founded Epicnest one of the first co-working spaces in Guadalajara; the idea was to help small and medium startups get a place to connect and work helping them grow. We went from 170 sqm (1,900 sqft)to over 1,000 sqm (11,000 sqft) in less than a year.

While at Epicnest, I became more and more interested on helping other small businesses to thrive. Helping, connecting and inspiring others to reach their dreams. This is how I became involved with Startup Grind and became the Guadalajara Chapter Director.

During my tenure I have helped and inspired over 4,000 entrepreneurs.

Startup Grind gave me the opportunity to meet with great entrepreneurs, having had the opportunity to meet and learn from politicians, such as Pedro Kumamoto (independent governor) teaching us about the importance of always being close to the ground. Santiago Zavala head of 500 startups in México and many more.

Tec de Monterrey School of Computer Science Director 

In a very unexpected turn of events, but as have always been drawn to education; I was invited to become the School of Computer Science at Tec de Monterrey in Guadalajara — yes, Tec re-opened the program — . It was an honor for me to be leading the school for one of the most promising disciplines of this era. 

I learned very quickly that the students do not join the university, just because of the educational quality, but because they have dreams and they are entrusting them to you, to help them achieve this dreams, this is why every single student was a special case and did my upmost to help them and make that dream true.

I expanded the university’s relationships with U.S. tech giants including Google, Facebook and Microsoft; leading strategic partnerships that would align with their spring and summer recruitment tours. This led to an increase in work placement of our ~250 student class from ~40% to 100% employment in top tech companies.

Working closely with the dean of engineering — Antonio Renteria — allowed me to see everything needed to build top educational programs; putting me in charge of the certification for top engineering educational programs in the country (achieving the certification with honors). I also led different initiatives that aimed for the implementation of the new educational model Tec21, such as Semestre-i that brought us an award from Ashoka

Tec being a private university accessible to a limited number of students I was able to sign a partnership with Wizeline that would allow Wizeline Academy students to get Tec de Monterrey endorsed certifications.

Wizeline Academy 

I was invited to lead the Wizeline Academy initiative, a challenge that I happily took and was quickly leading this initiative globally; having an impact in not only Guadalajara and San Francisco, but all the way to Vietnam, Thailand, Barcelona and other offices in Mexico, such as Queretaro and Mexico City.

I revamped Wizeline Academy’s computer science courses offered to the public at no cost, graduating over 10,000 students. Designed and executed the Software Engineer Trainee program closing the gap between recent graduates and industry needs; bringing on-board 50 Software Engineer trainees and hiring over 80% of them at the end of the program.

Looking to scale the impact of Wizeline Academy I started to build Saga an internal product that would allow us to build a profile card of our students, allowing us to see what skills they had and how they could grow in their career; I built a team of volunteers and did my fair bit of coding. This product is being used to this date impacting all of the wizeliners. 

In a similar manner, together with a colleague, we created the founding committee that would launch the first internal company-wide conference, Rewire. We chose the 4th of July as this would guarantee maximum attendance to our event with the least impact to the business. I quickly gathered support from key stakeholders in our e-staff; we had conferences in all of our major offices with remote sessions all sharing skills and best practices in what makes each and every single one of them who they are.

Wendy Johansson, cofounder for Wizeline and current GVP Experience Transformation at Publicis Sapient taught me the importance of leading a people oriented team; what it means to thrive and succeed while allowing everyone involved the opportunity to grow. Creating LEAD (Light, Ethical, Accesible and Dataful) experiences. Making sure to showcase what my team is doing.

It was during this period that I started my hobby and passion for video editing; I started to log on my trips and adventures in my Youtube Channel. Learning about story telling and the importance of thinking ahead.

Recent contributions

In my most recent endeavors, I have been focusing on helping others; I have been a mentor for Tec de Monterrey school of entrepreneurship to over a dozen startups and more recently to students of Laboratoria. Teaching them on best practices whilst building a company culture, implementing tech solutions and scaling.

Together with a group of visionaries in Guadalajara, we are building a school for CEOs and CTOs. Building and advising a team of well connected and capable entrepreneurs in our ecosystem; the objective is to create an ecosystem with better flow of VC and startup development. Teaching our students how to think globally and go beyond just building companies and actually making an impact in our world.

I had the opportunity to be experience maker and mentor at Decelera, a program that would help selected startups from all around the world become more people oriented and have a greater impact in our society. Here I had the opportunity to chat and learn from top professionals such as Alvaro Morales Global CEO for Santander focusing on investing in your people, being close to your clients and how one shouldn’t call it a vision but always a dream.

More recently, I have joined the leadership group for Emerging Markets Angel Network; an initiative that looks to leverage its capital and community to help startups reach their potential. Teaching not only the entrepreneurs but the VCs in our region creating a new wave of revolutionaries. 

This is me… in a 11 min reading (according to Medium algorithm), of course, there is much more to my life, many stories that are yet to be (or not to be) told — the failed tea empire we aimed to build, bringing over 500kg of tea to mexico; or the brand of Mezcal that I hope to one day relaunch — . 

I believe that in order to understand who one is, first one should know where one comes from.

This is my Life Story, what makes me, me; someone who will always be open to help you, a connector, a tech and educational community leader and speaker, with a passion for innovating; always raising the bar.

y name is Martin Moscosa and am a leader and connector in the Guadalajara tech and startup community; with a passion for innovating through education, always raising the bar. Up for a cup of coffee or tea at all times, looking to help others. visit mmoscosa.com to know more about me.