“I always imagined myself designing furniture or creating toys for children after graduating from college,” said Berenice Lopez, as she began to share the story of her professional journey. Instead, she took a 180-degree turn. Eager to start her career as an industrial designer, she took a position with General Motors Mexico, turning her attention to the auto industry.
As a member of the engineering department, she was tasked with taking the car designs created in the U.S. and making them “manufacturable,” meaning that the car parts complied with all the necessary regulations. She accomplished this by utilizing 3D modeling software which, fortunately, she was familiar with.
Quickly she realized this was not where she wanted to be, so she became a design release engineer where, as a facilitator, she was responsible for making sure all regulations and requirements from suppliers were met in a timely fashion. She was essentially the communications link among all the players that were needed to build the car. “It wasn’t exactly where I wanted to go, but the pay was good, and I thought I could learn a lot working for GM – plus, it would look good on my resume,” she said. It turned out she liked it so much she stayed for five years!
At that point, she realized she really liked automotive, but felt she had potential for design. There was one challenge. All the design work was done in the states. She was at a crossroads and needed to make a decision. She reached out to her contacts at GM and was told it would take three years to become a car designer, or she could get a masters in product design in a lot less time. She applied to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and was accepted into the graduate program. There was another problem. She hadn’t designed in years, so she had to take a one-year course to relearn everything and catch up with the new software, before she could begin her graduate studies.
Shortly before graduating in 2020 with a Master of Fine Arts in integrated Design or UX, Berenice left for spring break but never returned to campus. The entire country shut down because of the pandemic. There was no contact with any of her other classmates. “As an international student, I didn’t know anyone. It was really tough – very isolating,” she explained. To make matters worse, upon graduation she had 90 days in which to find a job, or she would have to return home to Mexico.
The painful memory of receiving no responses after sending out dozens of resumes to find an internship her first year, made her realize she needed a new approach. Fortunately, she received a promotional flyer for Global Detroit’s Global Talent Accelerator (GTA) program. She applied and was accepted. “There was so much I didn’t know,” she replied. “I didn’t know anything about how recruiters work. I learned it’s not even a human who reads your resume! If you don’t meet those tiny requirements – like the exact same words in your resume, you won’t get an interview,” she said. She went on to share how she learned how to write a stronger resume and how to utilize LinkedIn.
She even got great tips on how to use networking for job hunting. “It was a critical point for me, she shared. “I found out about a position at Ford through networking with my classmates. I never thought about networking with classmates before, until GTA said we should use the contacts we have. This classmate was also an international student who was doing an internship with a professor at CCS. Berenice was hired for a contract position at Ford through a staffing agency. “The hiring process was easier, because I went through a staffing agency first,” she said. Berenice was finally hired as a full-time Ford employee in September 2024. “We do the touch screens and the digital displays on the vehicle. I have been there for four years.”
When asked about other challenges, she says there still are for international students looking for work. She said companies are still not familiar with how to hire international students. A lot of companies still ask if you would need a visa sponsorship. “Once you answer yes, you receive an email about an hour later rejecting your application.” She said, “even after finding out about this job from my classmates, it was still hard. Fortunately, GTA helped me to interview well.”
Berenice believes having an international background has made her more aware of the opinions of people from other cultures, so the products she and her team design can be more friendly to people from other parts of the world.
She likes being in Michigan and working in the auto industry. She can see herself continuing to contribute here, perhaps with her own company. It would be something related to UX design. Maybe she would even develop an app.
