The Weekly Newspaper of Manhattan Beach Herald Publications - El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hawthorne, Lawndale, & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 Vol. 7, No. 6 June 5, 2014 Inside This Issue Business Briefs...................2 Certified & Licensed Professionals.......................6 Calendar................................2 Classifieds............................6 Finance..................................3 Food.......................................5 Pets......................................87 Politically Speaking............4 Seniors..................................3 Weekend Forecast Aquarium Fun Run a Success for All Ages (From L-R) Parker Stickney, Luke Plelert, and Ben Burmeister were the youngest winners of the Roundhouse Aquarium Fun Run, held May 17th at the Manhattan Beach Pier. For more photos, see page 2. Photo by Lynne S. Gross. Mayor Fuentes Adds Politics to Already Impressive Resume By Laura Sorensen It’s her day off, but Suzanne Fuentes still likes to talk about her job. Anyone else would be relaxing at the coffee shop where we meet, trying to get far away from work; but she’d rather give me a personal tour. She works at Northrup Grumman, in a large white windowless building overlooking a huge bay where satellite construction is ongoing. She smiles when she uses all her satellite and engineering acronyms, exuding an enthusiasm for her work that I don’t see all the time in people who have been at their jobs for decades. Generously she invites me to see where she works, and so I ride with her into the white-and-green campus, where she signs me in through security and shows me all around. It looks like . . . well, like a big building where people work. “I have an office with a door,” she laughs, as we pass rows and rows of cubicles, one stuffed with black balloons and decorated with streamers for a 50th birthday party. Fuentes’s love of engineering began when she was just a girl. Her mother, Suzanne Weston, had been a yeoman in the Navy before settling down in California as a business manager at Hughes Aircraft. “She was a single parent and had four kids … she went back to work when I was 13 or 14,” and Fuentes watched her younger siblings while her mother worked, sometimes biking over to her mother’s office to eat lunch with her. Many of Weston’s friends worked at Hughes, and Fuentes met them regularly, which exposed her to the idea of becoming an engineer. Her mother’s encouragement was pivotal in her own decision to go into sciencebased career, first with a BS in biology, and then as a new hire herself at Hughes Aircraft. Even though she grew up in El Segundo, went to college at LMU, and then settled down in a house across the street from where she grew up, Fuentes has traveled quite a bit because of her expertise. She has been many times to Cape Canaveral, spent time at the University of Hawaii, shivered through a very cold winter in Connecticut, and lived in Taiwan for two years. She indulged all my talk about LA’s amazing weather, noting that after her stay in Connecticut she brought back with her “an impressive collection of windshield scrapers.” I bet they would make a great wall display. Fuentes’s dedication to her career has put her in the right place to be the first female Quality Engineer in the Integration, Test, and Launch (ITL) department at Northrup Grumman’s Space Park; the first female Quality Assurance Manager (QAM) in the same department; and sometimes the only woman in a “high bay full of 60 men.” Her personal philosophy is to be open to experience: to say yes to offers, even if they seem scary. When she was sent to Connecticut she had two days’ notice to pack for a four-month stay, and she had to decide right then whether or not to go. Even though it was the dead of winter there, snowing like crazy, and she worked night shifts, she had a fulfilling experience. “I’ve just had so many opportunities, so I tell young people, ‘Don’t limit yourself! Say yes to everything!’” Even what seems like a bad moment can turn out well, as when she was passed over for a big job at NASA and assigned instead to the construction of ROCSAT, a satellite built for Taiwan’s National Space Program Office. “ROC is the acronym for Republic of China, which is the official name of Taiwan, but people called it ‘RoxanneSAT’, because . . . almost all the managers were women.” At first she was disappointed not to manage the seemingly more important NASA job, but the ROCSAT experience turned out to be one of the best of her life, and she is still in contact with friends she made during her time in Taiwan. Fuentes is positive about her experience as a woman in the aerospace business, noting that her employers have been overwhelmingly fair to her. She is glad to see the increase in STEM (science, technology, and math) programs aimed at children in middle and elementary school, because these programs present STEM careers as simply another option, both for boys and girls, and encourage children to think about a future as an engineer. These classes, she notes, might nudge a child toward engineering, and who knows, a former student might apply to her department. Be determined, she tells the kids; be dependable, and be kind, and you’ll be the kind of person that everyone wants to hire. Fuentes’s philosophy and her passion have spilled over into her second life as an elected official. At first she had no thought of being an official: she only wanted to be involved in the community somehow, and spent time volunteering on many committees, hearings, and planning coalitions to benefit South Bay cities. “I just stepped up, and paid attention, and thought that I should get involved. … Don’t put limits on yourself, because enough people will do it for you, that you can’t … just do it anyway. Don’t put limits on yourself.” Then she got hooked on city council meetings, and began just attending them because she found them so interesting. Her joke about city council meetings is, “There’s reality TV, and then there’s reality,” and there’s no question about which she finds more fascinating. She simply enjoyed herself, while becoming more and more interested in what El Segundo residents feel like they require for our city. Because so many residents have grown up here and their parents and children live here as well, they are invested in city policies, and Fuentes understands that and sympathizes. She told me stories about her own childhood here and how the city felt like a safe place to live in because people were watching out for one another, and she feels like that hasn’t changed, and no one wants it to. “I was lucky enough to grow up here and . . . I know so many people from my childhood, the kids and the parents, and now the kids are the parents . . . there’s that continuity, and that love of El Segundo.” Her tenure as mayor is another way for her to be hands-on involved in the city she loves and meet her constituency in person. She even convinced me that I needed to go to a city council meeting: “The people who show up [at city council meetings], I’m really grateful for them, that they come share See Mayor Fuentes, page 2 Friday AM Clouds/ PM Sun 72˚/62˚ Saturday AM Clouds/ PM Sun 73˚/64˚ Sunday AM Clouds/ PM Sun 76˚/64˚
Manhattan 06_05_14
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