From Rural Mexico to Cybersecurity Success: Estela Baca’s Inspiring Career Journey | Ep037

Episode Information

Show Notes

What does it take to transform from a farm girl in rural Mexico to a cybersecurity solutions engineer at a leading tech company? In this episode, Estela Baca shares her remarkable journey of defying expectations, overcoming setbacks, and building a thriving career in technology.

Estela’s story begins in Teziutlán, Mexico, where she grew up with her grandmother in a family where education wasn’t expected for women. After moving to Los Angeles at 15 without speaking English, she navigated high school, earned a computer science degree (while pregnant), and eventually found her way into cybersecurity through marketing and technical roles.

Key Topics Discussed: – Early Life and Foundation – Educational Journey – Career Development – Professional Growth Strategies – Cybersecurity Transition – Life Lessons and Philosophy – Networking and Community

Key Quotes: – “Action conquers fear” – “Every time somebody tells me no, something switches in my brain” – “I refuse to call it imposter syndrome. It’s the real deal syndrome” – “You can literally start as a marketer and end up as a VP if you understand transferable skills”

Resources Mentioned: – “The DevelopHer Playbook” by Lauren Hasson – “Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport – Google Analytics and digital marketing certifications – Local networking groups and tech communities

About the Guest: Estela Baca is a Solutions Engineer specializing in cybersecurity and log management. She leads employee resource groups, volunteers in her local tech community, and mentors others looking to break into technology. Her expertise spans digital marketing, technical account management, and cybersecurity solutions.

Connect with Estela: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estela-baca-07b02b6b/

Episode Highlights: This conversation offers practical insights for anyone considering a career change, breaking into tech, or looking to advance in cybersecurity. Estela’s story demonstrates that non-traditional backgrounds can become significant advantages when combined with determination, strategic thinking, and continuous learning.

Whether you’re just starting your career journey or looking to make your next move, this episode provides actionable strategies for professional growth, relationship building, and turning challenges into opportunities.

Subscribe to Career Downloads: Available on all major podcast platforms. New episodes release every Tuesday featuring real conversations with technology professionals who share their career journeys, lessons learned, and practical advice for professional success.

Transcription

Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to really learn more about their background and their experiences, to help uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me Estela Baca and I had followed her on LinkedIn, saw a lot of the posts, a lot of what she was doing, kind of dug into her background. Eventually I reached out to her and she was very gracious and decided to come on and share her experiences. So I’m very excited, she has a very interesting background, there’s a lot of challenges there and there’s gonna be a lot of good information and a lot of good storytelling for you to kind of listen and learn along the way. So with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Estela.

Estela: Hi, Manny.

Manuel: Hello. Again, I appreciate you coming in and talking about your experiences and kind of how you’ve managed your career over time. So if you wouldn’t mind just telling us kind of what your current role is and some of those responsibilities and we’ll take it from there.

Estela: Perfect, sounds good. Well, again, Estella Baca, I am currently a solutions engineer for a company that does log management or what some of the people call a SIEM. And some of the main things that I do on a daily is talk to our customers, find their pain points. And for those of you that don’t know what a log management tool is, everything that we use nowadays produces a log. There’s data everywhere, right? Or cell phones or a fit watches, even the TV shows that we watch, right? Everything has data. So the power of data comes when knowing how to leverage that data. So that’s where our SIEM tool comes in. And sometimes before you buy a product, you have to talk to somebody to kind of let them know exactly what is it that you’re looking for. And so that’s where my role com