HMP Graduate Mariana Arcaraz…Making Her Mark On The World!

Mariana Arcaraz – CHS Class of 2011

Mariana Arcaraz was born in Mexico City and grew up in Gainesville, GA. As a Chestatee High School student, she aspired to be an engineer just like her father and her grandfather. In her junior year of high school, she joined the Honors Mentorship Program and got a taste of the computer engineering career at Halski Systems, a local IT Managed Services and Cloud Solutions provider.

While shadowing the company’s engineering team, she learned about computer hardware, circuit boards, routers, information technology, and how to assemble a computer from scratch. In addition to computer engineering, Halski Systems had a genuine interest in teaching her about the inner workings of the overall business, so they allowed her to shadow the finance team and the company leadership as well. Her favorite part about the mentorship was that the engineers sometimes took her to their client visits so she could see their solutions applied to real-world problems.

Upon completing her internship, Mariana was very sure that engineering was her passion. In her last two years of high school, she met industrial engineers working in the manufacturing industry, healthcare industry, and the tech industry- all of which sparked her interest in the career. In 2011, Mariana graduated from Chestatee High School and began her undergraduate degree in industrial engineering at The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, GA. At Georgia Tech she was president of the Hispanic Recruitment Team, a mentor in the M&M mentoring program, an industrial engineering ambassador, a Goizueta Scholarship recipient, and a member of the Undergraduate Consulting Club.

During her time at Georgia Tech, Mariana had a co-op at Delta Airlines’ Airport Engineering Continuous Improvement Team. Throughout the three semester long co-op, she worked on three major projects which aimed to make ground equipment allocation and airport processes more efficient. She was fortunate to have international business trips to London and Tokyo along with countless trips to a number of U.S. airports.

After graduating from Georgia Tech in 2015, Mariana moved to San Francisco, CA to work as a consultant for Accenture in the tech industry. She currently provides consulting services to Google, and as a one-year San Francisco resident, she loves to explore the eclectic city, take advantage of the scenic views and hiking trails around the Bay Area, and attend the semi-annual Corgi Conference at Ocean Beach.

From Mariana: “HMP gave me extremely valuable career opportunities and experiences early on in life to help me establish where my passions lie. I highly recommends it to all high school students!”