Hector Javier Preciado embodies what Mt. SAC endeavors to do for our students. An immigrant from Mexico who was raised in the projects in Boyle Heights (East LA), he enrolled at Mt. SAC back in 1997, returning to school after an 18 month hiatus. He’s always been a person of great intellectual capacity but as a first generation college student he lacked the insights about succeeding in college. He is the 11th of 13 children and was the first in his family to attend college, initially enrolling at UC Santa Cruz right out of high school. After leaving for academic reasons, he returned to school at Mt. SAC with a zeal to get back on track. At first, he had some troubles re-entering college, but by the time he graduated he became a member of our Honors program, amassed a 3.5 GPA, and transferred to the highly prestigious Pomona College, in Claremont.

At Pomona, he continued to hone his skills as a leader and earned Bachelor’s degree in Sociology with a Minor in Media Studies. After graduating from Pomona, he went to work in Public Policy at the Berkeley based Greenlining Institute as a Summer Associate and eventually became its first Chief Operating Officer. While there, he became a regular Political Analyst for Univision and Telemundo, the country’s two largest Spanish TV networks, commenting on state and National policy issues and elections. During his last three years at Greenlining, he completed his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. While there, he was elected Student Body President of the part time program (the first Latino to hold that post) and was voted by his classmates as the commencement speaker. (You can view his speech here.)

After graduating from Haas, Hector made a career pivot and started working with a technology startup in the Search Engine Marketing space. Currently, Hector is a Content Marketing Strategist at LinkedIn, the leading social media platform for professionals.

Hector is one of the founding board members of Urban Ed Academy a non-profit organization providing educational and leadership programming for grammar school students in underserved communities in San Francisco, CA. He is also on the Board of the National Center for Youth Law, an organization whom are legal advocates for children in the Foster Care System. Most recently Hector has become an Advisor at Manos Accelerator whose mission is to jump start technology startups founded by Latinos.

Hector is married with two beautiful sons.

As you can see, Hector is a wonderful example of success, he is a role model to many, the pride of his community, and a proud Mountie.