From San Francisco to Los Angeles

We would like to introduce our newest college graduate Mr. Mario Goins, who graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Computer Engineering and a minor in Race & Resistance Studies.  The engineering degree has guided Mario to Los Angeles, CA as he currently interns for a NASA sub-contractor working with small satellites. The aerospace opportunities are abundant in Southern California. He also works with audio engineering, mostly in music production and continues to accept side gigs in the field.

“When I chose my major, I was already doing a lot of JAVA coding. As I advanced towards my degree, I became interested in the software itself. I then became interested in the actual hardware and found joy in putting circuit boards together for things like computers, amplifiers and embedded systems,” shares Mario.

Mario was born in Oakland and raised in Antioch and made his way to San Francisco State University. He played basketball growing up and was able to travel and play around the entire Bay Area.

“Ms. Estell and Dr. Wise and Ms. Demetra had intense classes that allowed us to get to know our culture and how to socially prepare ourselves for the world, especially as a Black person,” shares Mario as he reflects on the history he was first taught at Alive & Free.

“Our class was in person and then we moved to Zoom during the pandemic, but still had a major impact on my life. Ms. Demetra’s Financial Literacy course had a lot of GOOD information! I keep an eye on my savings because of Ms. Demetra’s first assignment. We had to go through the first week in class and label our expenses and that got me on a serious budget. I was always trying to budget before and couldn’t do it consistently, but her class TAUGHT me how to budget and how consistent saving could save me in the long haul. The class where we studied Antwone Walker was powerful. It taught me that money can be here today and gone tomorrow. I also realized there isn’t much financial literacy talk going on in our communities.”

I loved how the Alumni would come back to speak to us during class. They would show us their picture and share all of the things they went through. It let us know that we had a community before us, with us and after us. That was very essential to have in a college environment.”

“I really appreciate the support and guidance of Alive & Free. Ms. Estell would help me talk out my feelings to make sure I’m levelheaded and support me emotionally and understood where I was coming from. It is such a loving feature about her. Dr. Marshall always checks in with me and asks me if I’m doing good. We also talk a lot about basketball. They’re great guiding lights. They taught us about our history and how we were the creators of a lot of things. It gave me the confidence to learn and know that I can be one of them one day. I really showed up because I knew Alive & Free was legit.”

“Currently, I work for a company who creates balloon satellites. There was a program with a handful of students from other schools through a partnering university who collaborated on a balloon payload that could stream video and transfer shared data back and forth. It was a high altitude balloon-it went up 86,000 feet-that went up and came back down without any scratches. We were able to work with the University of Maryland’s payload team. I worked on streaming using a small camera and a Raspberry Pi, which is like a small micro-controller, and coded using Python script. The balloon was able to send images back to us while it was in the air and streaming. I do a lot of video payload and coding stuff.” The excitement Mario exudes from his internship is empowering. He continues to explore internships and is looking to attend graduate school in the next year.