ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — It is Hispanic Heritage Month and we're featuring 'Latinos in the Lou' who are making an impact in our community.
A Venezuelan-native tells her story how a simple idea turned into a multi-million dollar engineering company.
Lusnail Rondon Haberberger formed a family. Familia is their number one core value. It's the foundation to her business called Luzco Technologies, a woman-owned boutique engineering company.
"We do high powered designs for electrical facilities and its partners," Haberberger explained.
With her at the helm, her firm has flourished.
She said, "It was a team of two back in June 2017 and in the past seven years, we've grown to 115 familia members now."
For the past two years, the St. Louis Business Journal named Luzco in the top 10 fasting-growing private companies in St. Louis.
Her roots
Haberberger was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela and gradated high school at the age of 16.
Her parents are both petroleum engineers in Venezuela and she wanted to follow their footsteps as an engineer.
She said, "I picked electrical engineering. Why? Crazy enough, I wanted to find out how cell phones worked, if you remember they were huge blocks. I wanted to know how you could send and receive signals through these devices."
Her mom insisted Haberberger move to the United States to learn English through an exchange program.
From Venezuela, she moved north of Seattle and was determined to learn the language.
"I tried to learn as fast as I could, I would watch only TV in English, only listen to the CDs in English," she explained.
She stayed to study electrical engineering and met the love of her life in one of her classes, who is now her husband and the father of her children.
"I enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin for my electrical engineering degree. As life would have it, in one of my classes was this American boy who changed my life," she said with a smile.
Haberberger also felt another spark in school.
"It was during my MBA at UCLA, it was like an entrepreneurial spark. Something in me was like I think I could do this," she explained.
The light bulb went off to create Luzco. It's a pun of her name and the word 'Luz' meaning 'light' in Spanish.
Luzco Technologies
"It wasn't truly until my second boy was born that I felt like, how am I going to navigate being the perfect mother, if that's possible, and how am I going to be the perfect professional I want to be without any support system?" Haberberger added.
To find balance, they moved to her husband's hometown of St. Louis.
That's when Luzco Technologies came to life in 2017 in Maplewood.
As a Latina in STEM and a minority female engineer, she focused on fostering acceptance.
The company's website says, "Of all engineers in the US, just 14 percent are female. Additionally, only 28.3 percent account for Asian, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, American Indian, and Alaska Native. There is simply a deficiency of minorities and women in science, technology, engineering, and math."
At Luzco, there are 28 different countries represented.
"That's not just first generation, that's immigrants themselves," she added. "They bring different perspective innovation through those different lenses. Representation matters and seeing me as the CEO and founder of the company gives reassurance to other individuals saying well if she did it, I can do it too."
Being united in their differences makes the community she's built even more energized.
"My advice to all the Latinas listening today and Latinos as well, believe in your dreams. It took over 35 interviews back in 2008 to get my first job, my English was very broken. I believe that if we give chances to the right people, they will pay back," Haberberger added.