It can be hard for Latinos to break into the field of tech, they often lack social capital and funding. Tech writer Sara Inés Calderon and DIY Girls founder Luz Rivas join Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa for our live show in Austin to talk about these obstacles and why they believe being a Latino is actually an asset in the world of engineering and innovation. Later, Rivas shows off one of the prototypes her young Latina students made – an interactive video game called “Dance Dance Chancla Revolution.”

Sara Inés Calderón is a bilingual, bicultural hybrid California-Texas Latina who has been working in the digital media space since 2009. Although she began her career as a scrappy newspaper reporter, she’s successfully transferred her skill set to working in a variety of both mainstream and Latino digital media spaces, including tech blogs like Inside Facebook and TechCrunch, founding the English language news site NewsTaco, and most recently MiTú, the Latino YouTube network. She’s also the founder of the Latinos in tech site Más Wired.

Luz Rivas is the Founder and Executive Director of DIY Girls, a nonprofit organization that develops and implements educational programs and events for girls and women designed to encourage exploration with technology, promote self-confidence and support aspiration to technical careers.  For the last 10 years, she has worked on developing out-of school science and engineering education programs and has developed higher education programs focused on recruiting and retaining underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. Luz has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from MIT and a Masters in Technology in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Photo courtesy of Getty images.