Hi, this is Paul Zellizer and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Rudy Pada, and our title is Bootstraps and Bootcamps, New Mexico's Pathways into Tech. Rudy is a mechatronics and lab technician at GridFlow, where he supports the development of next generation lithium solar flow batteries. He specializes in IoT integration, rapid prototyping, and lab operations, helping bridge the gap between r and d and real world energy solutions.

With a background in robotics and automation, Rudy is passionate about building systems that are efficient, scalable, and safe for the grid of tomorrow. And full disclosure, I get to see Rudy quite often at start up events here in New Mexico. He works for one of my favorite. You're not supposed to say that if you're a leader in the ecosystem, cause you love all your kids, but I love grid flow. I have a special affinity for what's happening at grid flow and Rudy and I are working on atomic sixty six and NM Tech Talks together. So I get to interact with Rudy a lot. And Rudy, welcome to the show.

Hello, Paul. Thank you so much for having me today.

We we've got a few things to talk about. You have a lot of awesomeness in your life these days.

Yeah. Also I'm told so, so I'm told,

oh, no, no, no. It's it's for real. You totally have a lot of things going. So really one of the things I found interesting about your journey, this is not necessarily a path that you thought you were gonna wind up in. Is that fair to say?

I did not. No. No. It kinda completely took me by the side rails, but in the most good way possible.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah. Of course. So, you know, since the beginning, I I've always considered myself a nontraditional student, you know, since the beginning. You know, I always dealt with health problems as a kid. So I was born with leg health Perthes disease. That being said, throughout my childhood, I was very indoors a lot. I was told I couldn't run, I couldn't really jump, Had to limit my physical activity. So that really shortened my my, I guess, skill sets that I could obtain as a kid.

You know? So I I didn't play football. I didn't play baseball. So I I stayed inside. That being said, I got really into tinkering, a lot of a lot of objects that I found in in the house. And, Carrie, you know, as a kid, curiosity kinda takes over when you're a kid. And I would take apart toys as a kid, and my parents would get mad at me. You know? They would, you know, why are you taking apart all your toys?

I bought you that toy. Right?

Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, of course, at the time, during my that era, it was transformers. You know, and it was, like, something that was, like, mechanical, and it had lights, and it had motors, and it had sound. And I wanted to see how it worked. And so that was the curiosity as a kid growing up. But what's weird is I was never, like, the straight a student in school, but I was very active in school. I was very active in the community.

I was always doing clubs, but I was never the, like, four point o val valedictorian. I was never that straight shot student. I was I consider myself a c average student. And when I once I left high school and it was time for me to go to an education, I realized that, like, I need to work more in my my education, and I felt like I wasn't ready enough for for UNM. And so I I went to CNM, and I was like, well, let me just start there.

And if somebody doesn't know what CNM was, let's say they're not in New Mexico. Help us out there.

That's right. Yeah. So, CNM is the Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And so I figured that was a great start to kinda, like, dip my toes into school because I knew I wanted to deal with technology my whole life and some sort of tinkering aspect, and I just didn't know what those outlets were. I mean, as a first gen student and, you know, I really was just kinda, like, not really aware of all the things that I could do. You know? And I just knew, well, computer science. It sounds like I wanna do science, and I wanna do computers. Let's do that.