The death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, had profound aftereffects nationwide. One unexpected outcome is under way in San Diego.
It’s a high-energy push to streamline minority youth living in less-advantaged areas into science and technology careers.
The fledgling program is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Bill Rastetter — a pioneer of San Diego’s biotech industry. Among his many accomplishments, Rastetter co-invented Rituxan, the first monoclonal antibody drug approved by the FDA to treat cancer.
“In the middle of 2020, with George Floyd’s murder, I started to reflect and realized that we, as management and board directors (in the biotech and biomedical communities) have discussed the need for diversity for years. But we really didn’t have mechanisms or vehicles to address that problem,” Rastetter said.
While STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education is critical, Rastetter realized that more was needed to create permanent change.
Young minorities and women had to feel that they belonged in a STEM work environment, something that takes exposure, mentoring and ongoing financial and psychological .
To try to instill this generational change, he created San Diego Squared (SD2) with the help of H. Puentes, whom he recruited to be the nonprofit program’s president and CEO.
SD2 is designed to encourage STEM study in junior high through high school in area schools with diverse and underserved student populations. A year-long fellows program for juniors and seniors starts with 10 to 15 weeks of rotating visits (online or in person) to five innovative biotech and high-tech firms.
Each student is assigned mentor — a top person in the industry who “looks like” the student so that he or she can easily bond. Laptops are provided, transportation costs are underwritten and students even get a grocery stipend for snacks.
At the next level, $10,000 college scholarships are offered for as many as four years. Currently, 14 students are enrolled in the scholars program — 11 at UC San Diego and one each at Dartmouth, Stanford and UC Riverside. Each is paired with a STEM professional.
Companies are asked to offer the students paid internships to build on-the-job training, gain experience and forge relationships within the biotech community.
Puentes recalls the words of a top Illumina executive: “For every single job I had, someone opened the door for me.”
Here are some student stories:
- Firaol Feyera, of The Preuss School, intended to pursue mechanical engineering as a college major. But after further research working with his mentor, Ikenna Ebigbo, a tech firm manager, Feyera switched to aerospace engineering.
- Idalia Zamora, a senior supervisor at a local medical device company, is helping Hoover High student Yeimi Rodriguez-Hernandez navigate the college application process and decide on a major.
- For mentor Trisha Millican, board member of a genetic technology firm, bonding with her high school mentee Diana Garcia, of E3 Civic High School, included taking her to Julian to see snow for the first time.
- Alex Tep, of The Preuss School, worked with SD2 directors and mentor Satsuki Shumate, a corporate diversion and inclusion manager, on his college applications and the interview process. He was accepted at Brown University on a QuestBridge scholarship.
- Sophia Echeverria is majoring in neurobiology at UC San Diego on an SD2 PATHS scholarship. Her mentor, Baredu Morka, an associate scientist at Neurocrine Biosciences, helped connect her with six neurosurgeons to interview about their career paths.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion are part of the story, but including the human element is, too, and that’s what we hope to be able to address at San Diego Squared,” Rastetter says.
Nico Gutierrez, a junior at Mater Dei High School, ed the program nearly a year ago.
“It certainly transformed my career pathway and impacted so many other students,” he says. Especially memorable for him was an online live experiment performed by Neurocrine researchers.
He was linked with mentor Erik Caldwell, former San Diego city deputy COO, who introduced him to data analysis and AI learning and helped teach him Python coding. Caldwell, in turn, connected Gutierrez to county staff to observe their work with digital communications, social media and giant data sets, especially in the healthcare field. This helped him discover how data analysis informs policy.
“Because of my mentor and SD2, I want to pursue data analytics as a career,” Gutierrez says.
In the 2.5 years since fund raising began, SD2 has received more than $4 million from local companies and entrepreneurs. The goal is to have 200 companies in San Diego County each put in $10,000 a year for a total of $2 million every year, Rastetter says. Currently, 43 fellows are in the program.
Puentes calls Rastetter “the real deal” who has been locked in on this STEM incubator since Day 1. Puentes formerly headed CONNECT ALL, a business accelerator run through the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in southeastern San Diego. He was visiting with his wife when Rastetter, whom he had never met, called and asked him to head SD2.
Puentes, the son of Colombian immigrants, recalls his own arrival at George Mason University to start college, bringing only a can opener and a towel. This program spoke to his soul.
“I would have loved becoming a computer programmer or a software engineer. I really, really enjoyed math. I got 100s. But no one saw that in me, not even my own teacher. What they saw was a football player from Texas.”
Hence, Puentes is striving to create a program that empowers, offers front-row access, mentors and instills belief that you can have a profession in a STEM-driven company.
“I’m trying to build the organization I wish I had as a kid,” he says.
