The story of Rudy J. Alvarado.

Anyone can succeed in this world it’s just a matter of connecting the dots. Everyone is born with basically the same potential. Genetically our possibilities of achieving any set goals are astronomical. We can do anything we put our minds to. Failure belongs to those that never attempt anything. This is the philosophy of Rudy Alvarado, a man that once you meet him, is difficult to ignore, impossible to forget. He is an engineer by education and an entrepreneur by choice. When he talks to you about business he sounds more like an artist craving an empty canvas to deliver from it a masterpiece. Those who desire the same, heed his words of wisdom.

In the business world, not everything that you touch turns to gold, but for Rudy it’s more often than not. Rudy Alvarado was born in Laredo, Texas, but was raised across the river, in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. He was barely five years old; still he remembers how the two towns were divided, on one side the Anglos, the other side the Hispanics (mainly Mexicans). After graduating from high school in 1950, he went on to Laredo Junior College for one year. Later on he transferred to Texas A&M, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and two minors, in Electrical Engineer and Thermodynamics.

Hazel Lopez reflects in her long journey as a dancer.  

How the imagination of a few change the lives of many. 

Between Art and Education, has wavered Esperanza Álvarez’s life, better known by her coworkers and close friends as Hope.  So it happens that hope is one of three theological virtues, along with faith and charity.  Hope is the virtue from which people transform or elevate themselves to an altered spiritual state.
It has been defined as ‘inspired virtue that prepares the human being to gain confidence and truth to obtain the eternal life by natural and supernatural means.’
In her long journey Hope Álvarez has used this virtue time after time to reach out to those innocent souls, starved for knowledge, saturated in curiosity but lacking in direction.  Hope is a pioneer in Education, even more so in ever so challenging field of Bilingual Education.
In 1975 while attending Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, Hope heard the call to Education.  “I still remember that we would go out in a bus from Denton to Ft. Worth.  There we had the opportunity to work with children from pre-school to eighth grade.  The hours were long and exhausting, but the rewards were unimaginable,” says Hope.
She adds that her group was the third one of its class and only Arizona and California were experimenting at that time with Bilingual Education.  After finishing the educational program in Denton, Texas, her mom told her about a vacancy in Oklahoma, she got an interview and in the blink of an eye, began her long career as an educator. Westwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City was where along with two other young women, one of Mexican descent, Mónica Sandoval and April Haulman, originally from Colorado, took the reins of bilingual education in the school district.
The need for bilingual education was great and it reflected in the faces of 137 Hispanic students.  With barely one year in this school, Hope realized that the shortage of bilingual teachers was enormous.   
The demographic figures were an indication of the need for bilingual educators; it was then when Rosa King, who would later found El Nacional News and Violeta Crain joined in the ranks to fill the void.    Using the opportunity of education subsidies established by the administration of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Hope submitted proposals that once approved, would warrant financial assistance to academically prepare her bilingual assistants.