The Intern Spotlight: Claudia Castillo
Coincidences, leadership, and excellence: How Claudia paves her future by leaning on community.
Starting her day off with yoga at Time Square, Claudia Castillo, a summer intern in the GMNST team at American Express keeps her days full of adventures that in turn build her character. Claudia, a first-generation Mexican American hailing from Houston Texas is conquering New York City this summer one adventure after the other and doing it all for her family, her greatest source of inspiration. To say Claudia’s story and path to AMEX are conventional will be a massive understatement. Through a series of seemingly small trifles, Claudia chattered her path to Computer Science, and into the world of programming, confidently marching her way into American Express, and she is only getting started.
Claudia’s story begins in Houston Texas, her hometown where she grew up with her parents and two sisters. A middle child, she shares a strong bond with her older sister and an even stronger bond with her younger sister with down syndrome [include?] whom she helped her mom babysit as they grew up. Self-describing herself as a “very family oriented” individual, Claudia attributes a lot of her learning and drive to her upbringing in Texas. “My dad would go to all my fairs at school and take me to museums and just stuff like that,” she says with an earnest smile. And this involvement in school, family, and community echoes throughout her journey and current professional path.
But Claudia’s journey into computer science was nothing short of coincidence — and even luck! While in middle school, she took an accelerated Spanish class, soaring through it. But by the time freshman year of high school came around, Claudia was already in the Spanish V AP level, an advanced Spanish class for students who seek to develop excellent proficiency in the language. But she wanted even more. The following year she signed up for Spanish VI, but soon learned that she was the only one in her school that had signed up for the class. “I appeared on the first day of class, I was the only student and she [the teacher] was like, it’s okay. You can help out with my Spanish five class since you already took it like it’ll be fine. It’ll be. You’ll be my assistant” she recounts. But things quickly took a turn when Claudia’s counselor informed her that the class would be canceled since she was the only one who signed up. She was then provided with two options: take yet another PE class or AP Computer Science, and she chose the latter even though the class had already started three weeks earlier. “I was very scared and intimidated [but] I pushed through. I was in tears and I didn’t understand what was going on, but I made it through” she recounts with a smile and a sense of accomplishment on her face. “And after that, I just loved it.”
Claudia’s resilience and passion for education show through all the activities she involves herself in both in and outside the classroom. Taking on various leadership and management roles in high school, she co-founded an organization focused on animal conservation efforts, she was an editor for her school’s Key Club, an international service organization to serve others. Claudia also held the position as a marketing manager for her school’s orchestra, a position that helped her improve her graphic designing skills which she still uses today. Her keen ability to lead and her drive to serve others helped her secure a scholarship as part of the Hispanic Scholar Fund. The Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF), a community-focused organization founded in 1975 seeks to provide exceptional students from underrepresented backgrounds with the knowledge and resources needed to complete higher education. As an HSF scholar, Claudia learned about the idea of “paying it forward” which serves as a constant reminder to look back at her community as she paves her way forward. “I do agree with that,” she says. That is, the idea of “bettering yourself in order to be able to give back to your community.” This constant stove also led Claudia to apply to the prestigious Gates Scholarship, a highly selective scholarship awarded to 300 student leaders nationwide with the intent of helping them realize their maximum potential. And just like her path to computer science was seemingly random, so too was coming across The Gates Scholarship (TGS) which she won. She notes, “I found out about [TGS] through a random email at the University of Oklahoma. I was interested in the scholarship but not in the university at all as they were trying to recruit me.” And her interest paid off in the end when she was selected as one of the recipients of the accolade from amongst 36,000 applicants nationwide. The Gates Scholarship is an effort put forward by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to cover the cost of education for underrepresented minorities in higher education. Claudia is a rising junior at The University of Texas in Austin where she studies computer science with a minor in Mexican-American Studies. Her Mexican American minor provides a break from the complexities of Computer Science and her desire to connect with her own culture and her interest in cultural studies as a whole influenced her decision. I “wanted to connect with my culture” she states as she recounts a meeting with her academic advisor to discuss her minor.
American Express is Claudia’s first-ever internship and professional experience in Computer Science. While attending the National Leaders leadership conference organized by HSF, she learned about American Express and decided to apply for the summer internship in the Technology Business Unit. So far, Claudia has enjoyed her time at AMEX and is looking forward to forming various professional connections at the company, especially after learning about the open and welcoming culture at AMEX which makes it easy for anyone to meet and connect with others. She expressed interest in getting involved in the cybersecurity space at AMEX which she has slowly been learning more about in her college classes. She states, “I am interested in Cybersecurity, and I am hoping to get some experience over the summer to get me started on that path.” She hopes to shadow any colleague at the company this summer to get more exposure to the field. In particular, Claudia would love to have a coffee chat with Dominique Ortega, a Cybersecurity [expert] at American Express who gave a presentation during the intern orientation week on [the importance of security when building applications in the financial space] with a focus on how [American Express builds every application with security in mind]. So far, Claudia enjoys her time at AMEX, especially the small things like spending time with other interns, to understanding the organizational structure of the company.
In her free time, Claudia enjoys watching video essays about music and film theory. She especially enjoys the Sideways YouTube channel, a channel that focuses on music analysis in contemporary movies. Her favorite video of them all is The Perfect Musical Symmetry of Avatar the Last Airbender, a video that explores the complexities of leitmotifs and the usage of sound as a representation of various characters and themes in the critically acclaimed show, Avatar: The Last Airbender. The video explores various musical instruments, their origins, and how they shape the story of the show. Claudia played the violin for seven years which gave her a better understanding and appreciation for music and theory. She hopes to learn how to play the cello someday.
While it can be easy to get caught up in chasing accolades and immersing in leadership, for Claudia, it’s all about balance. “It’s a lot of planning, and prioritizing the things that matter the most to me: family, leadership, and community,” she says. Claudia draws lots of inspiration from her family and especially her mother. Her mother who worked as a housekeeper when Claudia was in Pre-K always warned her to “stay in school if you don’t want to be doing [housekeeping] for the rest of your life”; “do good in school” she would say to her. Claudia listened to her mom, and her success today as an intern at American Express is evidence of her resilience and attention to her mother’s advice. “My end goal is to give back to my parents” she states. “Knowing what they sacrificed motivates me everyday to keep going, and I hope to give back to them and my community someday.”
Whether it is doing yoga at Times Square or co-founding a leadership organization, Claudia is prepared for it all. And as she starts her professional journey at American Express she hopes to give back to the community as she grows professionally.
