Thriving on challenge: Ralph De La Vega: for Ralph De La Vega, COO of Cingular Wireless, life is a series of "inflection points". To hear him tell it, these are life-changing events, when everything appears to be in upheaval, but also moments of great opportunity to learn and transform one-self into a wiser and more experienced person

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, June-July, 2006 by Rick Laezman

For Ralph De La Vega, COO of Cingular Wireless, life is a series of "inflection points". To hear him tell it, these are life-changing events, when everything appears to be in upheaval, but also moments of great opportunity to learn and transform one-self into a wiser and more experienced person.

When De La Vega was only 10 years old, his family decided to come to America from their native Cuba, but at the airport, the authorities intervened. They informed his parents that only their young son bad the proper paperwork to leave the country. Choosing not to let this little setback spoil their plans completely, his parents phoned some friends in the U.S. and made arrangements for Ralph to stay with them. The young boy boarded a plane thinking his parents were not far behind, but what he thought would be only a few days eventually turned into four years.

For any 10 year-old to land in a foreign country without family or friends and unable to speak the language should have been a truly horrifying experience, but De La Vega was definitely not a typical child. For him, the event "changed everything for the better."

He speaks proudly of how he took "a potential negative" and made it into a "life changing experience." And this point of view, in a nutshell, became his defining philosophy. More than any other important event in his life about which he speaks, his immigration to the U.S., unaccompanied and at the age of 10, helped shape the kind of man he would eventually become. In short, he says, "it set the stage for the rest of my life."

It has proven to be a life driven by the desire to succeed. That desire is fueled, to a certain degree, by the thrill he gets from disproving his critics, or at least, those who say he can't accomplish what he sets out to do. Ralph De La Vega, if nothing else, is a man who doesn't like to be told what he can't do.

His impressive credentials are proof of his determination. De La Vega acquired his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Florida Atlantic University and his MBA at Northern Illinois University. He started working at BellSouth, which was then Southern Bell, in 1974 as a management assistant, and held a number of positions over the years as he continued to climb the internal ladder of leadership.

At the executive level, he has served as President of BellSouth Broadband and Internet Services, President of Bellsouth Latin America, and now, Chief Operating Officer of Cingular Wireless.

Still, an impressively unassuming De La Vega attributes some of his success to an American classic. And it's not a famous song or a great piece of literature, but rather, a culinary staple of the North American diet.

Ralph fondly recalls the moment when he first arrived in the U.S. at the home of his parent's friends and his hosts offered him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a cold glass of milk, but he left the snack on the table uneaten.

"I didn't want to eat it," De La Vega reminisces. "In Cuba, we drank our milk warm with lots of sugar, and I had never had this kind of sandwich before." Eventually he relented. De La Vega laughs, "When I realized I wasn't getting anything else, I knew I had better eat it." This, of course, is just another insightful way for Ralph to introduce his personal philosophy on education, which he describes himself as a "strong proponent" of. It is a position born out of his own personal experience. "When I fast came to this country," he reflects, "college was out of the question." But a number of things conspired to overcome those seemingly insurmountable odds against him receiving his degree, and because of that, he says, "I never lost hope."

The influence of his family, always pushing him to succeed, was a big factor. In addition to his parents, there was his grandmother, a schoolteacher, who constantly told him, "Do whatever you have to do to go to college."

With that goal in mind, De La Vega took "all sorts of jobs," including stints as a janitor and a salesman, to save up enough money to go to college. He started at the Miami Dade Junior College because he "didn't have enough money for a four-year university," then went on to drafting school. With the skills he acquired there, he was able to work, support himself and earn his engineering degree.

On that subject, he returns to the theme of defying his critics. "Many people said college was impossible," De La Vega remarks, "but if I had listened to them, I would still be working in a factory in South Florida."

After college, he embarked on the career that eventually led him to Cingular. But first, he put his time in with another company, the telephone giant Bell South. It was there that he had another one of his self-described "inflection points."

Still residing in his adopted home of South Florida, De La Vega accepted an assignment in the company's technical education center in Chicago. Listening to him describe the move, one can sense the nostalgia of the time when he felt like an immigrant "fish-out-of-water" and also the time when he was 10 years old, that forever changed his destiny. "I left the comfort of South Florida," he says portraying the move as a bold adventure. "I went to a new environment, a new company."