Article 1 of a 5-part series on UT San Antonio’s hidden talent pipeline

My friend Diego Bernal once told me, “Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.” 

It’s one of those lines that stays with you, a sentence that explains an entire city in eight words. I thought I understood what he meant when he first said it. 

That changed the night I met Mario Vela.

We were both at a downtown event, one of those nights when the right conversation finds you. Mario Vela is the Assistant Vice Provost of Career-Engaged Learning at UT San Antonio, the guy connecting San Antonio’s homegrown talent to the global economy.

He told me he worked at UT San Antonio helping students bridge from classroom to career. Then he said something that stopped me cold:

“We have Meta, Amazon, Disney, and Netflix recruiting regularly at UT San Antonio.” (Today, UT San Antonio alumni include roughly 482 at Amazon, 88 at Disney, 76 at Meta, and 5 at Netflix. Quietly, consistently, the pipeline has already begun.)

I’d spent more than a decade helping shape San Antonio’s tech ecosystem, running Geekdom as CEO, leading the 80/20 Foundation as Executive Director, and co-founding Tech Bloc to rally our tech community. I thought I had a good sense of the landscape. But that moment with Mario flipped my understanding.

That’s when I realized the next chapter of San Antonio’s tech story isn’t about startups. It’s about students.

This article kicks off a five-part Urban Nerd mini-series about what’s quietly happening at UT San Antonio, the city’s preeminent talent engine. In the coming weeks, I’ll share stories about the big-name companies now recruiting here, the students landing those roles, and how this wave of opportunity is reshaping San Antonio’s future.

A City Betting on Itself

San Antonio has always believed in itself, but over the last fifteen years something shifted. We started investing not just in our past, but in our future economy.

We built the spaces, programs, and partnerships to connect talent to opportunity. When I was at the 80/20 Foundation, one of the last negotiations I led was our contribution to help establish School of Data Science, which recently transitioned into the Center for Data Science. The Center is an organized research unit in the new College of AI, Cyber and Computing (CAICC) that launched this fall. Within CAICC today is the new Center for Data Science. Years before that, I helped launch the Open Cloud Institute with Jeff Prevost, executive director of the Open Cloud Institute, and Paul Rad, associate professor of Information Systems and Cyber Security at UT San Antonio, an early bet that cloud computing would become the backbone of everything.

Those investments weren’t glamorous. They were slow, local, and long-term. But they’re paying off sooner than any of us imagined.

The New UT San Antonio

The truth is, UT San Antonio has too many incredible things happening at once, and that’s a good problem to have.

It’s now a Tier One research university recognized nationally for its rapid ascent in innovation, research, and workforce development. It ranks top 10 nationally for Hispanic bachelor’s degrees awarded and holds three national Cybersecurity Centers of Excellence designated by the Department of Homeland Security and the NSA.

It merged with UT Health San Antonio, expanding its reach into medical and biotech research. It acquired the Southwest School of Art, preserving one of our cultural institutions while expanding creative and design programs.

And then there’s downtown. UT San Antonio has committed to moving 10,000 students into the urban core, anchored by the College of AI Cyber and Computing (CAICC). They’ve quietly bought up property, built new facilities, and turned what was once a quiet district into a future innovation corridor.

To me, that single move, with 10,000 students living, learning, and spending downtown, will transform the city more than any project on the horizon. Bigger than the Alamo renovation. Maybe even bigger than the Spurs building their new arena.

And the best part? These investments are already bearing fruit. In the next few articles, I’ll share stories of major global companies now recruiting in San Antonio. The ones you’d never expect. That’s the payoff, and it’s only the beginning.

Proof of Concept

When Mario Vela talks about companies coming to campus, he doesn’t sound like a recruiter. He sounds like a matchmaker. His team isn’t just hosting job fairs. They’re living UT San Antonio’s Classroom-to-Career mission, aligning coursework with labor-market demand and teaching first-gen students how to navigate industries their families never had access to.

It’s working. UT San Antonio has become one of the top producers of career-ready Hispanic graduates in the nation. Employers from health care to cyber to finance are discovering what those of us from here already knew. When you invest in people, they deliver.

And it’s not just the students who’ve evolved. The city has too. Downtown now hums with the energy of a college district. The San Pedro I building, home of the Center for Data Science within the College of AI Cyber and Computing, is filled with students coding, creating, and collaborating in the same blocks once written off as quiet after five. Its companion, San Pedro II, will house the new College of AI Cyber and Computing and bring those disciplines directly into that same urban fabric.

Why It Matters

When people ask me why I care so much about this, it’s simple. Because I’ve seen what opportunity can do.

Rackspace changed my life. A company founded by three Trinity students took a chance on a kid from the West Side without a degree and gave me a career and a purpose. I’ve spent every year since trying to build systems that make that kind of chance less rare.

And when you look at UT San Antonio today, 51 percent female, 43 percent first-generation college students, 60 percent Hispanic enrollment, and 68 percent underrepresented-minority students (including 8 percent Black and 60 percent Hispanic), you realize this is exactly the population Diego was talking about. The same kind of talent that’s always been here, but now they’re finally getting a fair shot.

Thousands of first-gen students, the sons and daughters of San Antonio, are getting the kind of opportunities that used to belong to someone else’s zip code.

It’s not charity. It’s strategy, the kind of engine of social mobility that changes whole families.

Every time a UT San Antonio student gets hired by a major company or launches their own, it reinforces the same message. This city can compete at the highest level without losing who we are.

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Citations

San Pedro I grand opening:
UTSA opens San Pedro I, home to the National Security Collaboration Center and School of Data Science (2023)

Acquisition of the Southwest School of Art:
UTSA completes integration with the Southwest School of Art (2022)

Graham Weston / 80|20 Foundation gift:
UTSA receives $15 million gift from Graham Weston to support the School of Data Science (2018)

Tier One research classification:
Carnegie Classification – The University of Texas at San Antonio