Engineering Success: Diana Iracheta, '19, Builds a Network for Empowerment
By Lia Kizilbash Gillet
Diana Iracheta, '19, motivates Latinas in engineering and STEM-related fields. (Photo: Diana Iracheta)
Diana Iracheta, ’19, impulsively launched a blog in 2019 to share her story as a young Latina engineer. It grew rapidly, resonating with fellow ingenieras.
She expanded her presence and built a network of Latina STEM professionals and aspiring Latina engineers. Today, her brand, Latina Engineer, and her foundation, Ingeniera Foundation by Latina Engineer, have more than 10,000 community members and even more on social media. Currently, her Instagram account has 26,000 followers.
Iracheta confidently embraced these new opportunities, opening herself up to explore ideas outside of her day job. She said seeing NIU professors balance successful careers while also having fulfilled personal lives significantly influenced her unwavering path to engineering and creating Latina Engineer.
“I had two mechanical engineering professors at NIU who were married to each other and had a family,” Iracheta said, referring to associate professors Iman Salehinia and Sahar Vahabzadeh. “Professor Vahabzadeh was pregnant during one of my classes. It was very inspiring because I always had trouble thinking about whether I needed to give up any part of myself to continue being in STEM or engineering. They showed me that you could have a great career and a family, and nothing had to stop. Watching them, I realized there could be room for whatever I wanted to do with my life. They were great mentors, and I still talk to them, even recently.”
By launching Latina Engineer and her foundation, Iracheta is also an inspiration to other women. Her mission is simple: to empower Latinas in engineering by providing educational and professional development resources.
Empowering Resources for Students and Professionals
In 2020, she hosted the inaugural International Latina Engineer Week (ILEW) conference uniting fellow Latina engineers.
“I put the first conference together very quicky, and it was held virtually because of the pandemic,” Iracheta said. “There were speakers and giveaways. I had a GoFundMe page, and people wanted to help. They could see the need for something like this. From there, I started looking for sponsors, and in 2021, started a hybrid of in-person and virtual events. We did three years in Chicago, and in 2024, we went to California.”
Iracheta is proud to have hosted over 3,000 attendees from across all five past ILEW conferences.
(Photo top: Kim Gomez, photo bottom: Abbie Gowin)
“I am empowering a whole generation of Latinas to succeed in engineering,” she said in a LinkedIn post reflecting on serving as the ILEW host.
Iracheta said the ILEW community is roughly half students and half early professionals. She believes her niche is being able to meet the needs of both successfully. Her foundation partners with organizations to sponsor the conference and help fund scholarships. They have awarded $26,000 in scholarships to Latina students studying any engineering discipline.
“I have seen our scholarship recipients grow and graduate,” Iracheta said. “Many of them stay in contact and are big advocates. It feels good to be able to contribute in some way to help them be successful. Some of them even find internship opportunities at companies we partner with.”
In addition to the scholarship, Iracheta and foundation volunteers launched a mentoring program to connect rising Latinas in STEM-related fields with mentors to address goals, challenges, opportunities and everything in between. They also hosted a career fair.
Iracheta is grateful to the many ILEW volunteers who work with her and share her passion.
“The ILEW team has been doing a great job, pulling a lot of the weight. Without them, I couldn’t continue doing this,” she said.
Commercials and Collaborations
In 2023, Iracheta’s success caught the attention of an advertising agency working with Toyota Latino. They filmed a mini-documentary featuring Iracheta while also advertising the Hybrid Prius, which Iracheta got to drive around downtown Chicago for two days before having to return the keys.
“I still think about it,” Iracheta said. “I’m like, wow, that really happened. I have a commercial!”
With her social media following, Iracheta collaborates with companies to promote their products or services. Past collaborations include Rockport Works safety shoes and an advertisement for Niagara Falls highlighting ABB's fully electric vessel carrying passengers to view the falls. She also offers her services to speak with students and professionals or host workshops.
Diana Iracheta, '19, says fashion and success can go
hand-in-hand and inspires others on Instagram.
(Photo: @latina_engineer)
Intentional Fashion
Iracheta does all this while also sharing her inspiring fashion—often covered in shades of pink. Her website poignantly states, “Who says you can’t be both?” referring to being a fashionable female in engineering.
“I used to feel like I had to kind of mute myself and wear one of my boyfriend’s shirts so that I didn’t look like I was wearing something super girly,” Iracheta said. “I just kept toning myself down, and then when I had an internship in college it gave me confidence that, you know, I made it. So, I started embracing who I was and started wearing pink and girly clothes.”
Iracheta said pink became her way to embrace her identity, regardless of whether she fit in, and it inspired her to choose pink for her brand’s color scheme.
“It was my way of saying you can be whoever you want, you can be as girly as you want, or you don’t have to; either way, you can still be in engineering. It just shows you that you can bring your 100 percent self into school or work and still succeed.”
Iracheta laughed and said, “But now I’m starting to get more into burgundy.”
Growth and Education
In her senior year in high school, Iracheta took her very first physics class. It was then that she found out she could do something else with math, which she always liked and was good at. She attended Waubonsee Community College with a scholarship covering two years' full tuition and earned her associate's degree in physics. After, she transferred to NIU to study mechanical engineering as a commuter student. Despite not having time to join any official student organizations on campus, Iracheta said she made many friends and felt a sense of community between engineering and business students.
Iracheta earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and started her career as a manufacturing engineer. She later worked as an automation design and manufacturing engineer in the automotive industry and then as a product design engineer for a professional trades equipment manufacturer.
Most recently, Iracheta enrolled in the M.B.A. program at Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, to study value chain management.
“I obviously don’t have all the answers, but I am capable of doing something bigger,” Iracheta said about pursuing her M.B.A. “I thought I was done, but I want to learn from other areas like marketing and apply my engineering skills more broadly. Starting Latina Engineer and the ILEW really opened my eyes to see all the different areas and impacts I can have in addition to engineering. Earning an M.B.A. will also help me grow into managerial roles.”
From Fearful to Fearless
Starting a new chapter in her life, Iracheta is living out the quote that guides her: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
“I had no idea how I was going to do many of these things,” she said. “Two minutes before going on stage, I think, ‘Why did I sign up for this? I don’t want to do this.’ but I do it anyway. It’s understanding that it’s ok to feel that way. I felt that way going into engineering; every new semester was the same. I’d start with rough grades and build my way up. I had to know that it was ok to struggle and be scared in the beginning for it to get better.”
Iracheta's advice: “It’s ok not to know everything. Find the people that will support you. Feel the fear, but don’t let it stop you.”