About

While current economic conditions are troubling, they do not compare to the Dot Com crash of the early 2000s. Come hear Peter Rojas, one of the highest ranking Latinos at Meta, give an overview of his career that began at that difficult time. Peter founded his own blogging company in response to the slow job market and went on to found and fund several tech companies before leading incubations at Meta.

This event was organized in hopes of inspiring others (especially other introverts) to attend events and share their stories in order to make meaningful connections. We will begin with UX Cafecito organizer Marisela Meskus describing how they met Peter and reached out to him for mentorship after establishing common ground. Following Peter’s presentation, a casual interview will take place between the two. Attendees are encouraged to ask questions at the end during a Q&A session.

This event will be recorded. If you do not wish to be recorded, please submit questions ahead of time and keep your camera off during the event.

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-RbgZhECOI

About the speaker

Peter Rojas (he/him), Head of Product for Meta’s New Product Experimentation, Founder of Gizmodo
Peter Rojas is Head of Product at NPE, Meta’s experimental product group. Prior to joining Meta he was a founding partner at Betaworks Ventures, a consumer tech-focused seed stage venture capital fund. He is also the co-founder of several startups, including Weblogs Inc. (acquired by AOL in 2005), where he created and was editor-in-chief of both Engadget and Joystiq; Gizmodo/Gawker Media (now part of G/O Media); music discovery service RCRD LBL; and gdgt, a social commerce platform (acquired by AOL in 2013). After gdgt’s acquisition he served as VP of Strategy at AOL, as well as Co-director of Alpha, the company’s experimental product group.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-rojas-4372449a/
Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@PeterR
Website: https://roj.as/

About the Facilitator

Marisela Meskus (they/them), Professional Genealogist, Master’s student of Library and Information Science, SJSU iSchool
Marisela Meskus is pursuing a MLIS degree in hopes of becoming a UX Librarian. Marisela has earned certificates in User Experience for Libraries and in User Experience and Web Design. Watch a recording of their UX Cafecito presentation about UX for Libraries here.

Besides volunteering as a UX Cafecito Organizer for Techqueria, Marisela is also Web Services Manager for the BayNet library association and a member of BayCHI, a Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction.

Like Peter Rojas, Marisela has worked at Meta. They recruited Technical Program Managers using the boolean searching and interviewing skills obtained from years of researching family genealogy. Peter and Marisela are also both natives of Merced, California and have an English degree.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meskus/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meskus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marisela.meskus

About the UX Cafecito

A time for UXers, researchers, and anyone interested in UX to get together to chat, meet other Latinx UXers, and help each other with questions/advice. We will meet weekly on Fridays for 30 minutes.

Visit the UX Cafecito Notion site to access UX resources, give us feedback, or sign up to present or facilitate at events!

Location

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87011125211

Meeting ID: 870 1112 5211

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