From Where We Started to Where We’re Going
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Our Home series continues this Hispanic Heritage Month. We asked our Advisory Board, our guest writers, and our own team one question: what does “home” mean to you? Today’s essay comes from SVL Advisory Board Member, Michael Archuleta, CIO at Mt San Rafael Hospital in Colorado.
A Fighting Chance
I was raised in rural southern Colorado, and part of my childhood was spent in government housing in a rough neighborhood. I knew kids who had never left their hometown. There were places we had never seen and opportunities we did not know how to reach. My mother was determined that I would find a direction, even when I struggled to see beyond what was around me.
Boxing helped widen that view. My coach worked a second job so we could train and travel across Colorado without worrying about payment. Those trips gave us experiences our families could not otherwise have afforded. In the gym, I learned discipline, composure, and accountability. Outside it, I discovered how much existed beyond my neighborhood. My coach wanted us to have a fighting chance to improve our lives. Today, home means remembering the people who made that chance possible and recognizing when I can do the same for someone else.
From Government Housing to Boardrooms
Mi tía Sandra kept my Peruvian heritage close through family stories, traditions, and the familiar tastes of anticuchos and chicha morada. She helped me understand the history behind my name. That connection has stayed with me through every professional milestone. My Hispanic identity is part of the person making the decisions, wherever those decisions take me.
My career has taken me from government housing to boardrooms, from needing opportunities to helping create them. As a technology entrepreneur, investor, and adviser, I have founded ventures and helped companies grow, including businesses that later went public. Colorado’s governor appointed me to the eHealth Commission, where I advocated for stronger connectivity and cybersecurity support for healthcare providers. At Mt. San Rafael, I lead technology in an organization that has earned a CMS five-star rating and HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 recognition. Those accomplishments reflect demanding work by a committed team. Building that standard of excellence in the community that raised me gives success a meaning I could never separate from home.
I Believe in Us
When I shared my HITEC 100 recognition, I opened my jacket in the photograph to reveal a shirt that read “Creo en Nosotros.” I believe in us. I wanted those words beside my name because I know what it can mean to see someone with a background like yours recognized at that level. I want young Hispanic professionals to imagine themselves leading organizations, building companies, and influencing the direction of an industry.
Being named among Becker’s healthcare CIOs to know and its Hispanic and Latino Leaders to Know, selected as a 2026 Colorado Technology Association APEX CIO/Tech Leader of the Year finalist, and featured on the Spring 2026 cover of HealthTech magazine has brought national attention to our work. I use that visibility to advance a conviction: “Your ZIP code should never determine your healthcare outcomes.” I know the families behind those words. My heritage and upbringing influence whose needs I notice, whose potential I take seriously, and what I am willing to advocate for. Recognition gives me a larger audience. What I do with it is my responsibility.
Make Opportunity Tangible
Learn your family’s stories while you can still ask questions. Then take your own ambitions seriously enough to prepare for them. Develop your expertise, accept honest feedback, and pursue responsibility. You can build a life your family has never experienced while remaining deeply connected to them. The discipline I learned through boxing still serves me: prepare, keep your composure, and be accountable for your effort.
Those of us already in leadership must make opportunity tangible. Through the Archuleta Creo En Ti Foundation, I have sponsored multiple technology and educational events that give underserved children experiences they might otherwise miss, including opportunities to participate free of charge. I once stood where those children stand. A fee, transportation, or simply never being introduced to a field can keep a young person from discovering an ability. Leaders can do something about that. Creo En Ti means I believe in you. I want children to understand those words through the opportunities we put within their reach.
Creo en Nosotros
Creo en nosotros.
At an educational event I supported, a student approached me with a copy of HealthTech magazine and asked for my autograph. We stood together holding it, and I thought about the child I had been. Someone once gave me the opportunity to see beyond my neighborhood. Now I could help a young person see beyond the limits they might have imagined for themselves. That is what I want my accomplishments to make possible.
This Hispanic Heritage Month, I am mindful of families facing uncertainty about their future together. Every child deserves security, belonging, and a chance to develop their abilities. I keep putting my time, resources, and influence behind that conviction. Someone gave me a fighting chance. I have spent my life doing something with it. Now I’m helping others get theirs.
I know where I came from. I’ve earned where I stand. Your ZIP code should never determine your future. Creo En Nosotros. #GSD
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If this story reminded you of your own home, share it. And stay with us, more voices in this series are coming all month.
More from the Home series
Two Flags, One Home by Eddie García
Where Home Really Is by Nancy Marmolejo
What Home Means to Me by Francisco Jimenez
Home, In Their Own Words by SVL Advisory Board
Stories like this don’t tell themselves.
SVL has spent over a decade making the invisible visible, celebrating Latino excellence, naming hard truths, and calling our comunidad to action. Independent Latino journalism only survives when the community it serves decides it’s worth protecting.
There are two ways to stand with us:
Are you a Latino professional, entrepreneur, or leader ready to be celebrated? Become a Cultura Ambassador, SVL’s official community membership for Latino leaders who are ready to have their story told, their work amplified, and their excellence made visible.
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Juntos Adelante. Because silence is complicity. And so is inaction.
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Also in Raíces — Our Story, Our Narrative
What Home Means to Me
For his father, home was Mexico. For his mother, home was wherever family gathered. For Francisco Jiménez, home became something he had to leave to find. A reflection from the author of The Circuit.
Where Home Really Is
Nancy Marmolejo spent her twenties moving from apartment to apartment. Her mother's house was the one constant, until the year she became her mother's caregiver, and the year after, when she had to let it go.
Two Flags, One Home
Two flags hung on his bedroom wall growing up, Mexican on one side, American on the other. Eddie García opens SVL's Hispanic Heritage Month series with a Sunday morning that never left him.
Sergio Domeyko
Publisher
Co-Founder, COO & Publisher of Silicon Valley Latino, covering Latino business and culture across the Bay Area and beyond since 2011.