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Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
From the fields to the rigs: How Ray Lopez became Stanford GSB's voice for the American Dream
As a young teenager, Raymundo Lopez would cover his face whenever supervisors appeared in the California grape fields. Not from shame, but from necessity: He wasn't supposed to be picking fruit under the Central Valley sun. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now But those scorching afternoons became the crucible where his dreams took shape. 'When I was out there for hours a day, my mind had to wander,' Lopez recalls from his Stanford Business School classroom, a world away from those fields. 'I hated the hundred-degree temperatures, the dust everywhere, the mud getting stuck all over your shoes. I just had to take my mind somewhere else, so I would dream big. What would it look like to be a doctor? What would it look like to be an engineer?' Today, Lopez sits in the most prestigious business school in the world, but his journey began with a legal status that changed everything: he was born on American soil while his parents worked the fields. That moment gave him citizenship, and with it, a foothold for his entire family's future in the country. His parents, immigrants from Sinaloa, Mexico, came to California as migrant workers fleeing the escalating violence of the 1990s. Lopez was born while they worked the fields, automatically granting him American citizenship and, as he puts it, 'anchoring' his family to America. It was under those same grape vines where Lopez's father delivered the words that would reshape his son's trajectory. 'You can work under these grape fields every day, like us,' his father told him. 'You'll have enough to pay rent, get some food, and that's enough to live. But if you pursue education, you can be in an office space somewhere with AC. You can work on something you value, something you can treasure.' To a kid sweating under the California sun, the message was clear: education was the pipeline out. But Lopez's path wasn't just about escaping physical discomfort. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now In second grade, a teacher recognized his curiosity and fostered it in a way that would prove transformative. 'First day of class, I asked if we had free time,' Lopez remembers. 'She said, 'Free time'? We have a library right there. There's books. That's your free time.' From that moment, he realized 'the immense power that a book had.' This early recognition of education's power became even more crucial given his family's context. 'In Mexican American culture, with immigrants in particular, they value work,' he explains. Ironically, Lopez didn't end up in the air-conditioned office his father envisioned. Instead, he became a deepwater drilling engineer, spending weeks at a time on massive vessels in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Arctic zones, managing projects worth $50-100 million. 'I'd balance my time half in the office, half in the field,' he says. 'Most engineers are supposed to do that to understand the work they're executing, but I loved being out in the field, at the wellheads where the connection really happens, where manual labor makes thoughts become reality.' His role required orchestrating complex operations involving geologists, reservoir engineers, PhDs, and contractors, all while being younger and less credentialed than most around him. What drives Lopez isn't just personal ambition but a deep sense of responsibility to his community. 'You can't be what you can't see,' he emphasizes, echoing a principle that has shaped his entire worldview. As the only male child among five siblings, Lopez carries additional weight. Lopez's experiences have crystallized into specific policy visions for when he eventually runs for office, a goal he states matter-of-factly, not as aspiration but as inevitability. His future platform would center on two key areas: amnesty for undocumented immigrants who have been contributing to society, and heavy investment in STEM education at Hispanic-serving institutions and historically black colleges. 'There's about 11 million undocumented immigrants; these aren't just Mexicans, but people from all over the world who are taxpayers without citations or violations, people cleaning our schools, taking care of our kids, sustaining the fruits and vegetation that sustain us,' he says. His second focus reflects his own journey: 'There's so much talent within underserved communities that are underrepresented in boardrooms today. If Hispanics represent 30 to 60 million Americans today, there should be significantly more at Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, the Ivy Leagues.' Perhaps most striking about Lopez is how he navigates his dual identity. 'I'm the border,' he says, using a Spanish phrase that translates to 'I'm neither from here nor from there.' This position has created its own challenges: 'When I went to Mexico, I was too American. Sometimes growing up in America, I was too Mexican.' Yet he's found strength in this duality: 'We have Aztec blood, but we have American dreams. That's a powerful mixture.' Today, he identifies as 'significantly more American. My blood is Mexican and red like the Mexican flag, but it's American through and through.' Lopez acknowledges the role of fortune in his journey. 'I could have been born in a different part of the United States. Luck is a lot of it, being put in the right place at the right time with the right educators around me.' But he balances this recognition with a broader philosophy: 'We need a sober sense of reality that we are all lucky. Even living is a gift. We all have air in our lungs and an opportunity to take a shot at something. Everybody's here for a purpose.' As he prepares for his next chapter beyond Stanford, Lopez carries with him the weight of representation and the power of possibility. His story, from covered face in the grape fields to commanding million-dollar operations on offshore rigs to the halls of Stanford, embodies the very American dream he's determined to prove still exists. 'My parents picked fruit so that I could pick a future,' he reflects. 'I can't take that for granted."
CNBC
24-04-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Google CEO: This mantra helps me cope with pressure at work—I learned it as a student
Running a $1.92 trillion company isn't for the faint of heart, according to Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Most of his job relies around making high-stakes decisions and solving problems other people have been unable to fix, Pichai said at a Stanford Business School speaking event in April 2022. Whenever he needs to cope with stress at work, he remembers a simple two-part mantra he learned as a graduate student, he said. First, making any decision is better than wasting time ruminating on the options. And second, most choices aren't permanent, and you can learn from your mistakes if you make one, said Pichai. If someone at Google comes to him with a problem — which often happens when his team is divided between two solutions — he pushes himself to choose one of those options in an efficient manner, he said. The alternative usually involves letting the pressure get to you, which could slow down the team or, sometimes, the company as a whole, he added. "You making that decision is the most important thing you can do [to move forward]," Pichai said at the event. "It may feel like a lot rides on [your choice], but you look later, and realize, it wasn't that consequential," said Pichai. Learning how to cope with pressure at work can help you be happier and more productive at work, some experts say. If deadlines, a high-profile project or a micromanaging boss stress you out, try to view the hurdles as opportunities to rise to a challenge, rather than a threat to your career or livelihood, University of Pennsylvania burnout researcher Kandi Wiens told CNBC Make It in April 2024. "When we're faced with a stressor out of our control, we create stories in our head to address the unknown, which can lead to a lot of self-criticism and catastrophic thinking," said Wiens. "But resilient, successful people challenge their assumptions, they're able to interrupt the negative thinking loop and ask themselves: 'What is true here, and what assumptions am I making about the situation?'" Pichai said he first learned how to help teams solve problems quickly from his mentor Bill Campbell — a former Intuit CEO and Apple board director — while studying material science and engineering at Stanford University, Pichai said at the Stanford Business School event. Campbell, who coached other prominent tech leaders like Steve Jobs and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, emphasized that leaders need to know how to be an effective tiebreaker for a deadlocked team, said Pichai. "Every week [Campbell] would see me, he would ask me, 'What ties did you break this week?'" Pichai said, adding that it taught him to be comfortable having the final word. "It's always stuck with me."
