Amado Flores
Mexico
Civil Engineer
My name is Amado Flores and I am originally from Michoacán Mexico.
It was very difficult where we lived in Mexico. The only school that we have in my town is elementary school. So if you want to go to middle school, you got to move. If you want to do high school, you got to move, and farther and farther away from home. In 2010, it wasn’t safe in some areas in Michoacán, but it got even worse. There were bombing attacks by the drug cartels in some of the main cities. It is why I decided to come here,
I came here to the US when I was 21 years old. My dad had a green card and he was able to get one for my brother and me.
So finally in 2011 I got my green card and we moved to Texas but I didn’t like it. I had a sister in California and she told me about the educational opportunities so I decided to join her in California. It took us like six years since the beginning, since the application started, six years to get green card for my mom and the two of us.
When I arrived in California, I got a job as a line cook for $8 an hour. I also enrolled in ESL classes at the local high school and started taking more advanced classes at the junior college. IN 2013 I graduated from the junior college with an associate degree in Engineering and in 2019 I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. A month later I began work as a project engineer at Webcore Builders and am helping build the new Facebook campus here in Menlo Park.
I am very grateful to Upward Scholars, a local non-profit that supported my education. They paid for my textbooks, and transportation to and from college. They really believed in me and I will always be grateful for that.