As she entered her teens, her mother’s example of entrepreneurship led Gonzalez to strive for a future beyond what was expected. After earning an associate’s degree from Palo Alto College and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio, she became a co-founder of one of San Antonio’s first internet companies, Webhead.

Since its founding in 1994, the company has grown into a major defense entrepreneur, with 58 employees developing high-security software and cloud technology while working for local and national government, non-profit organizations and others. organizations.

“Most companies can’t do government work and business work together. She and her company are able to be flexible enough to go both ways, ”said JJ Romano, who worked with Gonzalez while he was vice president of SAIC, a major defense contractor. “It has to do with size and having the right people in place. I can’t wait to see her take her to the next level with Webhead.

Gonzalez has also been active in the community, founding Cascarón Bash, an event during the Fiesta that raises funds to promote education in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics among members of minority groups. She is a director of CPS Energy – where her father worked as a mechanic – and sits on the boards of the Alamo Colleges Foundation and the Texas A&M University-San Antonio Foundation.

She and her husband recently launched a quantum computing startup under the name Quantum Reality, which is still in its “nascent stage,” she said.

“Different cultural origins”

Growing up in a blue collar area of ​​the South Side, the tech industry was not an obvious career path for her. It took courage for her to break with what was expected, she said.

“You have to unlearn some things and hold onto other things that are an integral part of who you are,” she said. “When you are the first, people are afraid for you, and sometimes out of fear people come who want to discourage you, tell you that you are aiming too high, you will be disappointed.”

Her experiences have given her a better understanding of how more women and minorities can be made to succeed in business and technology. A study conducted last year by Accenture and Girls Who Code found that women in the tech industry are leaving these jobs at a 45% higher rate than men. According to a Brookings Institution report, only 7.9% of computer and math jobs in the United States were held by blacks in 2016, and only 6.8% by Hispanics.

Even though the tech scene struggles with a lack of diversity, five of Webhead’s seven executives are female and seven of its 10 development team are Hispanic.

“I think we need to understand that minorities approach startups very differently. They come from a different cultural background, ”she said.

The typical layout of a well-funded tech company – with ultra-cool interior design and free high-end snacks – may seem foreign to someone from a minority background, she said. And the free stereotype of a tech entrepreneur might discourage those with children from pursuing a career in the field.

“It’s hard for someone to enter this world when it’s not your world – you just have a great idea,” she said. “I think we need to demystify what it’s like to take advantage of technology to start your business. You can start it in your home.

“We need to do a better job of positive reinforcement – that being a minority isn’t a disadvantage, it’s a competitive advantage,” she said. “All of those things that are considered bad – poverty, lack of resources – they automatically introduce, in my experience, innovation and ingenuity and an agile mindset to survive. You see the world very differently. And that’s a competitive advantage.

Find another way

Gonzalez was born in San Antonio to a mother in Laredo and a father in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, who later became a U.S. citizen. After living on both sides of the border, the family moved to San Antonio when they were 3 or 4 years old.

“I was conceived in Mexico, born here,” she said with a laugh. “My parents came and went. I was literally what you would call a border child. They lived in two worlds.

As the oldest of five siblings, she learned to be responsible from an early age.

“There are a lot of responsibilities that fall on you,” she said. “I learned to be very diplomatic. I learned how to lead an effective council from my siblings, including my parents. I found myself learning negotiation skills at a very young age.

Her mother was an avid reader who encouraged her and her siblings to educate themselves, taking them to the library when they were young. Her sister is now a professor at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, while one of her brothers is a digital engineer. On the wall of her office, she has a framed American flag that another brother sent to her while serving in the Air Force in Iraq.

Once Gonzalez was in his mid-thirties, his father accepted his career, she said. When she bought the building where Webhead is located on San Pedro Avenue in Tobin Hill, he told her he was proud of her.

She never thought her family was poor when she was growing up, she says. Yet she remembers having to wait hours to see a doctor at a clinic when her family had no health insurance.

“You didn’t really know what financial literacy was,” she said. “I think I had a sense of myself that I would see (my parents) trying so hard, and yet not moving a lot. We were raised very well, my parents did a very good job raising us. It was very traditional – you know, the father is responsible and the mother is emotional support.

Yet the family struggled to create wealth. “There had to be another way,” she said.

A new model

After enrolling in Palo Alto College, Gonzalez found a role model in Leticia Sanchez, the college’s associate director of admissions and records. Sanchez introduced her to feminism and political justice, and Gonzalez got involved in voter registration through the League of United Latin American Citizens.

She was “very young, very energetic, had a lot of ideas,” Sanchez said in an interview.

Palo Alto had only been founded a few years before Gonzalez enrolled, and she was eager to become a leader of the new college, helping to form a student recruiting organization that she later chaired, Sanchez said.

She recalled that Gonzalez was torn over how to respond to the pressure she was under from her father and others to adopt a traditional female role.

“She was thinking about things, but I think she didn’t know how to express her feelings back then. So I was trying to say, ‘Yeah, your dad, your childhood and all that is a tradition, but we’re women and we’re strong and it’s a concept called feminism,’ ”Sanchez said.

Gonzalez was introduced to the world of computers thanks to her husband, Bill Gonzalez, who studied computer science at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She remembers meeting him for lunch in the college computer lab and seeing him use Linux and Netscape.

She and her husband – who now have four children – founded the business in 1994 with $ 500 from a credit card. They operated from the living room of their West Side home. She was roaming the streets of Houston and Commerce asking small businesses if they needed help building a website, she said.

A instantaneous of their website in 1996 shows that they were charging as little as $ 15 for a simple web page, $ 50 for an animated GIF, and $ 400 for a Java application. The company would soon expand to serve nonprofits, startups, chambers of commerce, the City of San Antonio, and Bexar County.

Her husband, now the company’s chief innovation officer, said she acquired the nickname “The Rainmaker” because of her ability to attract new clients by delivering presentations, writing proposals and by answering technical questions.

“It was gangbusters. We couldn’t keep up with the work she was doing, ”he said. “We had to tell him, ‘We can’t keep up. “”