EWL Home - About Us - Carolyn Pineda

Carolyn Pineda

Welcome to Empowering Women as Leaders. I am the chairman and founder of this non-profit organization. At the turn of the millennium, I was inspired to establish a non-profit organization to support high-potential women who aim for college degrees but have pressing financial needs. It took longer than I imagined bringing my vision to reality, but with the help of the talented women serving on the EWL board, the organization was launched in October 2004.

My passion for EWL comes from events in my life as a young woman. When I graduated from high school in 1973, most women were getting married and starting families. My parents urged me to go to college; they had always told me I was smart and capable of doing what ever I set my mind to achieve. At that time I was more interested in following the footsteps of my girlfriends. So I married at 19.

My first marriage lasted six years. My husband and I didn’t have much in common, so I did something no one in my family had ever done; I divorced when I was 25. This was a low point in my life. I felt I had disappointed my parents in several ways.

I had been working as a dental assistant for four years, yet I wanted to go to college to get a professional degree so I could do something different with my life. After the divorce, my parents agreed to pay my way through college, an astounding decision on their part. Their continued support and constant encouragement gave me the confidence I could complete my degree.

Many years ago, I would not have envisioned being a vice president of a fortune 500 company. However, today I am vice president of services for Intergraph. I have been with Intergraph for less than 1 year. Prior to Intergraph, I was the VP of services for Sabre Airline Solutions in Southlake, Texas. I started my career as a programmer at Texas Instruments and within 13 years progressed my career to Vice President.

My job is very rewarding as it gives me an opportunity to work with people, both with customers and with my employees. I have found the IT industry to be an extremely gratifying field, one that offers me the opportunity to solve complex and multi-dimensional problems. I have also had the opportunity to travel around the world.

I am thankful for all the good fortune that has come my way in life. One of my key goals is to help others – to collect the seed of my accomplishments and pass it on to other women so it may flourish again and again. Many people support charities where they are passionate and connected with the cause. Through EWL, I want to give back to other exceptional women with financial need and to provide a supportive environment so that these women can reach the success that I’ve achieved in my life. I am grateful to have found others who share my goal of finding and helping unfulfilled yet smart women, our Stars, find bright futures ahead for themselves.