Ed Vargas - SVL Executive Cultura Ambassador

June 22, 2020

Ed Vargas has been active with Diversity & Inclusion, Employee Resource Groups and Leadership with community groups that make a difference throughout his career. His Fortune 500 experience includes C-Suite roles in Packaging and Publishing businesses. He operated his own Strategic Planning, Marketing Communications Consulting business in the 90’s. After the last 12 years of IT Digital Program Management at AT&T, Ed restarted his Vargas and Associates Consulting business leveraging his expertise in Planning, Education, Mentoring, ERGs and the Ethical Use of Tech for Social Good. He is passionate “paying it forward” collaborating with Latinx groups, e.g. Moderated Panels on the “Impacts of Tech, Future of Work” at the 2019 Creo En Ti Summit.

He is a Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship Mentor at Santa Clara University to accelerate entrepreneurship to end global poverty and save the planet. https://www.millersocent.org/

He is the Lead for creating a San Francisco Silicon Valley Hub for Claudia Romo Edelman’s Hispanic Star national campaign at the We Are All Human Foundation. www.weareallhuman.org

Ed has worked across Businesses with Stakeholders, Legal, Supply Chain, Operations, IT, Compliance, Metrics Analytics and C-Suite Executives. He is known as a “go to team player” with credibility by listening, building awareness, trust among diverse teams developing strategies, programs and delivering results.

As AT&T’s HACEMOS ERG EVP-Community Outreach he launched HACEMOS Latino Diversity Stories in 2018; YouTube videos of members’ career successes, community engagement focusing on what we have in common vs negative stereotypes. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCRQrO3c6ih4ibdWk7JNT4eFOrO0iGvSo

He helped start High Tech Day, STEM workshops for high school students at the San Ramon Chapter. It is now the flagship HACEMOS annual event with over 2,600 students at 32+ AT&T facilities in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Mexico City.

Growing up in a household full of music was an inspiration for Ed. Attending a Louie Armstrong concert with family as a young boy, he asked his Dad to help him meet Louie after the performance so he could ask him how he could play trumpet better. They were invited to meet Louie. He encouraged Ed to practice, play his best and signed his program. Ed learned later how difficult it was to be a black musician, born in New Orleans in 1900, dealing with racism growing up in the South. Ed admired Louie as an Ambassador of music that brought people across the world together.

After graduating from Bellarmine College Prep, a Jesuit all boys high school, Ed was accepted at Santa Clara University. Ed turned down a football scholarship at St. Mary’s College. Ed’s California State Scholarship covered most of the tuition, but he had to earn more to pay for books & living expenses. He worked summer days driving a fork-lift unloading trucks at California Canners & Growers and two part-time jobs during the school year. He played in a dance cover band with his brother, Steve, the drummer to enable his education. As a life-long musician playing guitar, singing in cover bands, Ed believes in the strength music has bringing people of all ages & cultures together. “We need that now more than ever to help each other.”

He received his BSC degree in Business and worked for a year before starting Law School. Unfortunately, his Mother was diagnosed with cancer and his father had a heart attack after his first year. Ed started working and completed his JD degree at Santa Clara University attending night classes. He was the first in his family to get an advanced degree.

Ed achieved his first career goal when he became a business executive at the age of 30. Starting in Packaging Sales he became Product Marketing Mgr., Corporate Planner and VP of Sales & Marketing for Fortune 500 firms within five years.

Ed achieved his second career goal, international business travel, when he was recruited to become Publisher, Editor & Conference Director for a start-up International B2B firm about the Nonwovens Technology. Ed set up ad sales agents in England and Belgium for European clients. They published a magazine, technical books, newsletter and expanded a North America conference business to Japan partnering with C-Suite Leaders.

Doing business around the world changed when his son Adam, started growing up. Ed developed Vargas & Associates, his own Strategic Planning, Marketing & Communications Consulting firm. As a featured speaker at international, national conferences, he was invited to Harvard to participate in a Roundtable on Diversity. That became an article in the Harvard Business Review, A Question of Color: A Debate on Race in the U.S. Workplace.

Ed collaborated with other consulting groups and took Leadership roles in the SF Area. E.g., President of the Hispanic Community Foundation, (now the Latino Community Foundation).