November Alumni Spotlight: Marcos Moya (Gaithersburg High School)
LP shines this month's Alumni Spotlight on Marcos Moya, graduate from Gaithersburg High School in Montgomery County, MD.
Marcos received his Associate’s degree from Montgomery College and his Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain Management and Operations Management from The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He is currently working as a Transportation Manager at Amazon’s Headquarters in Seattle, Washington - responsible for developing programs to improve the transportation of packages within the Amazon network.
Read what he had to say below:
“I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 13 years old from El Salvador. LP connected me to my new community, it showed me resources, explained how the local and federal government worked, and much more. One memory from the program that impacted my life was visiting the World Bank. That moment was very important to me because I mentioned to my Program Officer that I was very curious about international politics and relations and she took the time to plan this trip that changed my life. When I came home from the World Bank, I thought to myself, ‘If I am here I can come back in a different way. I can achieve this. I want to become part of an international organization.
My parents were very involved in my education and stressed how important it was. However, they didn’t understand the college system in the U.S. and couldn’t guide me. But LP filled in that gap! I asked my Program Officer for help, we met in Washington, DC, and spent several hours going over scholarships and working on college applications. I was able to get a scholarship to go to Montgomery College completely free. Like I said earlier, I was surprised how much someone cared about me that would spend the time and trouble to help me get ahead.
After transferring to UMD, I chose Supply Chain Management because I wanted to be involved in logistics with an international organization. I am very proud to share that immediately after college, I joined the largest food producer in the world, Nestle. It was quite a privilege to get started there and now my career has really taken off. After Nestle, I worked at Bird Rides, where I managed the shipment of every Bird scooter in the United States, Latin America, and numerous other countries in the world. Now, I joined Amazon as a Transportation Manager, which is another step in my career. Looking back, I fulfilled that dream that I had at the World Bank. I've worked with three organizations now and I am very proud of that career achievement and how my career has taken off since then.
I want to tell younger alumni to have an open mind. There is so much more out there (opportunities, careers, skills) that you can develop and achieve if you have an open mind. You should explore all the possibilities and take risks! You may not feel confident sometimes, but you should still take the risk to go do an internship, pursue a job, a type of education, and/or a career field that may sound very difficult. If you take the risk, then you will know that you could do it. If you don’t take the risk you will never know. I come from a poor background and I struggled to learn English in high school. But I want you to know that it doesn’t matter where you come from, there is an opportunity to grow in this country, to get ahead. We don’t have to get stuck in the same place where we came from. We can grow, we can change, and go a completely different way."