Last Wednesday I attended a social mixer put together by an organization called CHispPA.  The name is a play on the word chispa, meaning spark in Spanish.  The event was great, with lots of smart, successful people from all walks of life.  It certainly did "spark" a lot of high quality connections for me.

The event took place at Thea Mediterranean restaurant, which, in spite of its Greek name is Latino owned (whatever sells, right?).  I guess they didn't expect as many people as showed up because the area reserved for the group got pretty crowded pretty quickly.  I still would agree that it turned out to be a very good venue for this event.  Maybe next time we'll take over the whole restaurant.

I met several interesting people, starting with Joe Velasco, Vice Chairman of CHispPA.  Besides volunteering for this organization Joe is a successful investor as well as a Sr Loan Consultant at The Loan Source.

Right next to Joe, I met Victor Chiang, of Victor Chiang Consulting which provides investment research to institutional investors.  Victor is a really interesting young man responsible for millions of dollars of investments in private equity.  We talked for a while but most memorable was a story he used to illustrate his investment philosophy.  He pointed out that back when cars first became a hot "high tech" business opportunity, over 320 companies jumped on that band wagon (no pun intended).  Within a year, only seven were still in business.  "So, was it really smart to invest in car companies then?" asked Victor rhetorically, "no, the smart thing to do was to short horses!"  You'd have no idea who the winners were going to be among the new car companies, but you knew for sure that the "horse" businesses was going to be negatively impacted.  That's a lesson (and story) I'll remember for a long time.

No matter, Victor is of "the Valley" and he does invest in high tech companies, too, like Palatir Technologies, a PayPal spinoff.

I also met Claudia Martinez and Melanie Espino.  We got to talk about Hispanic last names and how they are pronounced in English.  I pointed out to Claudia that in Chicago her last name used to be pronounced MartinEZ, instead of MarTInez as it's pronounced in Spanish (and, thankfully, in California).  If we had been sitting, she would have fallen off her chair.  "I would die," she said, "if I had to call myself that!"  Lucky for her, people have learned to pronounce Martinez more like it sounds in Spanish.  Unlike in my case, where I still am PerEZ (however, the last name Peres is pronouced PERes, how come?).

Claudia is a Project Controls Analyst at Jacobs Carter Burgess a $12B (with a B) provider of technical, professional and construction services.  She's also a Board member of the Latina Coalition Silicon Valley an organization that educates and prepares Latinas in the areas of civic engagement and leadership development.

Finally, I had a long rambling conversation with Melanie Espino.  Although she was trained as a Spanish teacher she ended up in high tech because, as she put it, "I ended up designing databases for fun."  Can you say "born geek?"  These days she's the Evaluation & Technology Manager at First 5, an non-profit organization that provides a range of resources to help parents raise healthy children from the baby’s first heart beat through age five.  The best part about this organization is that they are funded form the Tobacco Settlement Funds.  At least in this one case, the "sins of the fathers" is helping pay for the health of the next generation.

All in all, as you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun and met great people.  In fact, I am already looking forward to CHispPA's next event.