Gabriela Arreola Ceferin

Gabriela Ceferin first connected HACE through the student organization, Latinos Involved in Further Education (LIFE) at IIT. HACE hosted professional seminars talking about life in the workplace. Through these sessions, Ceferin began to get the idea that you never know when opportunities will come knocking on your door, so one should always be prepared.  That lesson came in handy a few years later when she attended an HACE career conference, where she discovered her current employer.

At the HACE Career Fair in 1998, Ceferin was working at a booth for the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.  She had just started a master's program and was not actively looking for a job.  Another volunteer told her that the recruiter for McDonald's Corporation was looking for a structural engineer. Having no idea that the company even needed architects and engineers, she spoke with the recruiter and gave him her resume.  Four months later, almost having forgotten about the encounter, Ceferin received a call from the Principal Structural Engineer.  More than 11 years later, Ceferin still works at McDonald's Corporation as Project Manager for Architecture & Planning industry.

Ceferin enjoys the variety of work available to her in the job.  With a background in architecture and structural engineering, she gets a well-rounded perspective on how the building works. It provides her with twice the opportunities to work on new projects.  Ceferin got her masters in Structural Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1999.