Reinier Moquete’s company CyberWarrior is a highly successful cybersecurity services provider, but Moquete’s greatest success might be in his extensive not-for-profit and philanthropic work supporting diverse young people in STEM fields. Moquete founded the Latino STEM Alliance, advises a committee on strengthening the pipeline to tech from Boston Public Schools and was appointed to the Massachusetts Governor’s STEM Advisory Council. Tune in to learn how Moquete credits his Dominican American grandmother and mother for his entrepreneurial spirit.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed and this is JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: What do Apple, McDonalds, Ford Motors, State Farm Insurance, and Home Depot all have in common? They were all founded by the children of immigrants. The children of immigrants have a high propensity to be as entrepreneurial as their parents and the United States has benefited from generations of immigrants like this. For Reinier Moquete, son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and founder of CyberWarrior, a cybersecurity services provider in Boston, Massachusetts, he is continuing the entrepreneurial tradition started by his grandmother and mother who moved to the U.S. in search of a better life for their families. In fact, he says it is love of family that prompts immigrants to do what it takes to be successful in their new homeland, including starting a business. Reinier has gone further however and has given back to the country that gave his family a chance. He has launched nonprofits and foundations that seek to elevate disadvantaged communities, expose children to science, technology, engineering and math (or STEM), and uplift particularly Latinx people in the U.S., bringing them to the forefront of technology and leadership, as you will learn in this week’s JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Reinier Moquete, Founder and CEO of CyberWarrior, welcome to JobMakers. How are you?
Reinier Moquete: I am good, thank you for having me.
Denzil Mohammed: So, tell us a little bit about your company, give us the 30-second pitch.
Reinier Moquete: CyberWarrior is a very unique company. We train people to be cyber security engineers and we put them to work. And so, we have developed a methodology that includes an online learning platform coupled with an 800-hour boot camp, live online. People are essentially exposed to the cybersecurity industry all the way from the basics of computer science, and we graduate them as well qualified security engineers, and then we help get them a job.
Denzil Mohammed: That is pretty incredible. And as I was talking with you earlier about the statistics around unemployment rates for cybersecurity this means your company is really important, not just now, but going forward in the future, right?
Reinier Moquete: Yeah. I mean, the reality is that cybersecurity has become a national security issue. It is not only about ensuring that people are just entering the industry, but that our water supply, our food supply, our energy supply is protected. You know, today’s conversation is particularly timely with all the [inaudible] happening across the world. And the reality is that when we think about protecting our country, there is going to be a cyber-attack before any missile ever gets launched. And that is just the world we live in. Beyond that, cybersecurity has become a tremendous economic development opportunity. You have a situation where there are 4 million open jobs, globally, 600,000 open jobs in the U.S. alone. It is a very unique opportunity for underserved communities to come into the industry and to grow and prosper. And, you know, it is pretty exciting and it is pretty rewarding when you have someone who maybe works in a kitchen or someone who comes from a totally non-technical background without any college education at all, and they are able to go through our program and walk out with an $80 or $90,000 a year job in only six months. It is a pretty amazing thing.
Denzil Mohammed: That is pretty incredible. And the numbers you shared, 600,000 open jobs in the U.S., that is kind of crazy. I want to get into your journey into entrepreneurship. Did you always want to be your own boss? Does it run in your family? You know, tell us how you ended up there.
Reinier Moquete: I filled the entrepreneurial box when I was a kid. My first entrepreneurial experience was inventing a video game for my friends. They had this little card video game when I was like seven or eight and I used to let kids in the neighborhood play for 25 cents in the Dominican Republic, so that was my first entrepreneurial experience. Nine years old I had another business where I was making bracelets and selling those in school. I used to go to the market and buy leather and cut it up. I guess I have always been an entrepreneur to one degree or another, and I always knew that it was a passion that I wanted to pursue.
Denzil Mohammed: And what qualities and skills do you think you had to draw on the most in order to launch your own business?
Reinier Moquete: Well, I think that the key thing to be an entrepreneur is tenacity and perseverance. Entrepreneurship is hard. There is this misconception that people go into entrepreneurship because they want to have more time or because they are going to want to work less. And it is actually exactly the opposite. Actually, you have to be a little bit crazy for you to want to go into business. Most businesses fail. Most people put their life savings into these businesses, and it takes years before you get that money back. So, you have to really be committed for the long term. For me, it was tenacity and perseverance and a conviction that I would rather play and lose than not play at all. In terms of hard skills, my entire career has been in the tech sector. And so, I brought that into my life as a business owner. But the reality is that most of what I know today I learned after I decided to jump, and I had to figure out how the parachute works after I was already in the air. And, you know, to a large degree, I find myself flat on the ground with my face dusted and bloody and all that, and again, the perseverance comes in because you just have to get back up.
Denzil Mohammed: I have never heard that analogy before about skydiving. But it is, you are taking a risk. You are literally jumping into the unknown in a sense. And I would venture to suggest that perhaps this is something that was in your genes because I like to say that the act of migrating is an entrepreneurial act. You take a risk, you leave everything you know behind. You are not sure if the outcome is going to be successful or not but you do it anyway. And your grandmother took that risk by leaving the Dominican Republic and coming to the U.S., is that right?
Reinier Moquete: Absolutely. And many of my family members as well. My mom, as well, who was a medical student in the Dominican Republic and only needed her theses to finish. Yet she decided that it was here where she was going to be better off with her kids. And I think it is a story of many of the immigrants that you see in the U.S. today. In fact, most of us, either as direct immigrants or kids of immigrants, that we see that desire, that audacity to succeed above all costs and the willingness to pay a very heavy price of leaving family behind in order for you to pursue that desire to do something different and/or to provide for your family back home. Right? It really takes a lot of courage. And I think in many ways, the story of America, the story of entrepreneurs and the story of immigrants are one in the same.
Denzil Mohammed: It is funny that you say that because from the time immigrants started to move here, whether they called themselves immigrants or not, they started businesses. Levi Straus up until Elon Musk today. It is the story of immigration, and it is the story of America. Reflect a little bit on that move of your grandmother and your mother and the other people you knew who moved from the Dominican Republic. What kind of qualities do you think it reflected on their part to take that risk?
Reinier Moquete: I think one of the key things that it requires is the love of family. It is rare that you don’t see an immigrant who doesn’t send money back home. And even those of us that may be first generation of Americans, we might have been born here, we still have that sense of commitment towards other family members who perhaps are not as stable financially. And so, you have that sense of unity, that sense of supporting one another. And I think that that’s the key driver for most immigrants. I think that beyond that, again, it is that burning desire of pursuing a passion. And, you know, you mentioned great entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. It is really that tenacity that says, well, I am not going to be able to achieve whatever it is that I want to achieve within my local community. And so, I am going to go out and I am going to venture, and I am going to pursue whatever it is I want to pursue at all costs. And I think that that’s the thing that has made America so successful. When you have all these people with that same audacity, that same desire to move forward.
Denzil Mohammed: I love the way you frame that in terms of love of family. And the story of many immigrant families can be very chopped up. You know, one parent moves first, they are separated from their kids and for years, they try to establish themselves. They send for one kid, two kids. The rest of the family comes up. It might take 10, 20 years for that to happen. And people often wonder, you know, why would families split up like this? But sometimes that’s the only way. More oftentimes than not. And you used the word audacity, which I find fascinating. I don’t think anyone else has used that word on this podcast to describe … it is audacious of them to think that they can do this and that it might actually work. What is your company, CyberWarrior, what does it ultimately empower individuals to do? What career and business opportunities are available for them after they, for instance, take your boot camp?
Reinier Moquete: We are training cybersecurity engineers. We are taking them into the doorway of an industry that is growing by leaps and bounds. Everything in our world today is dependent upon technology. Even if it’s a glass of water. That glass of water does not reach your lips unless it was touched by technology in some way, shape, or form. Look at the way we are communicating today. Look at the way the world has changed with our pandemic, right? So, cybersecurity is the knitting that keeps all this technology working properly. Otherwise, people would take it apart and use it for nefarious things. So, we put people at the doorway of this industry, and they you’re able to not only pursue careers as engineers, but they are also able to pursue careers as auditors, they are able to pursue careers in sales. The fact that you’re able to sell technology, the fact that you’re able to sell software, the fact that you’re able to sell consulting services, but in such a fast-growing industry. All these things are extremely lucrative. And so, if there is one thing that we are providing, it is opportunity, it is an opportunity people to gain access to economic freedom.
Denzil Mohammed: It’s not a job of the future, it’s the job of now. But all of this goes back to whether or not enough people choose to focus their studies on STEM. You are part of several initiatives in Massachusetts. Some of which you have founded yourself like the Latinos in STEM and the CyberWarrior foundation, as well as TechHire Boston that encourages young people to get into the STEM fields in a very hands-on way. So, tell us about at least one of them, let’s say the CyberWarrior foundation. What is the main message you want to get out to parents and kids?
Reinier Moquete: Well, with CyberWarrior Foundation, what we aim to do is to engage youth early in their lives into the world of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is a career that you will never be bored. Why? Because you are learning something new every single day. And it also has this mystery to it. It has been romanticized in movies with the hackers and this and that. And the reality is that the things you see on TV are, to a large degree, very real. Those are the risks associated with a security breach. And at the same time, it also provides not only a very fun career path, but one that allows kids to use a lot of the things that they enjoy. Let’s say gaming, we use those concepts in real lives. So, I would say that for parents thinking about opportunities for their children, here is something that would allow them to play and have fun with while also making a good living.
Denzil Mohammed: Let’s put an intersectional lens on this, because you are also a part of the Latino Equity Fund out of the Boston Foundation. And a lot of the work you do with young people is to get families that are in disadvantaged communities or groups that are probably traditionally not occupiers of the STEM field to enter the STEM field. So why is that part of it important to you? And does it have anything to do with the fact that your heritage is based in the U.S. and the D.R.?
Reinier Moquete: Yeah, I mean, as an Afro-Latino I am certainly committed to creating equity and opportunity, and that’s why I decided to participate in the Latino Equity Fund. The Latino Equity Fund is the first and only Latino focused fund in Massachusetts. It was funded and seeded by The Boston Foundation and Hispanics in Philanthropy. It is a very unique partnership of Latino philanthropists and business leaders who essentially came together to say, “Hey, we need to find some solutions and we need to elevate this message,” right? So, the focus has been on raising money and over the last few years $700,000 in grants have been given out to Latino led and Latino serving organizations. Going into the next three years there is a focus on raising $10 million in order to strengthen the economic opportunities that are available to Latinos.
Denzil Mohammed: Have you already seen success with this, even if it is small successes?
Reinier Moquete: Absolutely. We not only have been able to support communities within the COVID pandemic, but even before COVID, we had been making key investments in early childhood education, health equity, workforce development. And so over the last five, six years, where we have been operating, we have been very deliberate in identifying the communities that need the most help, and then engaging subject matter experts from within those communities to ensure that whatever investments we are making are targeted towards those that need it most and where we are going to see the most impact. And so, there is a number of stories that we have seen of families that have been brought out of poverty, as well as, for example, in certain communities here in Massachusetts such as Chelsea, for example, has vaccination rates of 98, 99 percent. And those are the type of things where we look to invest.
Denzil Mohammed: Oh, wow. That is an incredible statistic about Chelsea. Finally, just bring it into the present day, given the legacy of your family. If you had to give America a message about the value of immigrant entrepreneurship to the U.S., you know, you’re training people, you’re not training immigrants, you are training everybody to protect the U.S., to protect all of the U.S. assets. Given how shrouded immigration is in politics and controversy, what would you say to America about the value of immigrant entrepreneurship to us?
Reinier Moquete: Yeah, I mean, I believe it was Nelson Mandela that said, “Everything is impossible until somebody does it” right? [inaudible] And that same desire to do the impossible, to create opportunities for their families to create opportunities for themselves are things that are the bedrock of entrepreneurship are the bedrock of capitalism. We are the people that are creating jobs. We are the ones that are risking it all for the things that we believe in. And that is what has allowed us as a country to prosper and move forward. A country of immigrants. We always have been. And it is that, again, audacity, that desire to move forward that allows us as a country to be successful.
Denzil Mohammed: That is a terrific message that succinctly sums up everything we try to say in this podcast. Reinier Moquete, CEO and founder of CyberWarrior, thank you for joining us on the JobMakers podcast. JobMakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and at the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thanks for joining us for this week’s incredible story of entrepreneurship, this time from the child of immigrants. Next week, we will be joined by Theresa Park, deputy director and senior executive vice president of Mass Development, on how immigrant entrepreneurs are revitalizing cities like Lowell, Lawrence, Worcester and more. I am Denzil Mohammed. See you next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers.