Raul Maldonado

Raul Maldonado

Data-And-More(9_001).csv

Next 5 years – Another Raul’d-Map (2026 Roadmap)

5 minute read
#Personal

Just like Donald Trump, here we go again…

Someone referring to Greenland as Iceland... and more mistakes. Davos Conference 2026
Donald Trump referring to Greenland as Iceland and more mistakes.

Note to the reader: This blog post is not a recommendation into hustle culture, financial advise, or imposing political views & opinions.

Self-Reflection

In the past 5 years, I continued growth in my career by leading and delivering results in a smaller company after being impacted by an April 2025 RIF at my prior company. It was a blessing in disguise where I had to scratch the itch of driving more impact within innovation of GenAI and my field. Moreover, I had delivered in advocating for diverse dense housing in rich resourced areas–placing gentrification in other neighborhoods, not just low resourced ones. Lastly, I became a teaching instructor for Urban Cycling at another nonprofit as well. In that path were underlying 2010, 2016, and 2021 5-year goals, graduating from college, getting a career, and also being engaged! Of course, these ambitions and goals were certainly never expected of me, and I had to work to where I am now.

How so? Well, in:

  • ~2009: I had the opportunity to drop out of High School, without traditional ‘sit-com family confrontational’ repercussions I used to watch.

  • 2010: The Great Recession lead me to not finding a job after High School (I was looking for warehouse or Fast Food jobs). So, I enrolled into Junior College, not knowing what to do.
    • 2013: I transferred to UC Davis–truly thankful of their diversity initiatives for accepting me.
  • ~2016: I had the opportunity to save up ~2months worth of rent and take a strategic risk to move to San Francisco, or move back to Modesto.

“As a child, I was always one level below the average in math, and I felt incompetent compared to peers.” –My “5-Year Plan For Career Success” feature in a Udacity blog post

  • ~2021: I met my partner and now are living together in the Bay Area! Building on our separate foundations and continuing to support one another in our own strategic risks.

Reiterating, I had several opportunities to regress into an expected lifestyle, even so without a safety net. However, with lot of preparation, grit, network of opportunities & people, someone to personally help me in my journey, I am fortunately still able to continue with my goals.

Motivation for this Roadmap

The above prelude is not a boast, flex, or brag. But rather, a reflection on some thoughts I had in the past couple of years, especially this one…

  • Growing my Chicano Roots - How can I still support volunteering my time to advocacy in Housing affordability, Sustainable Transportation, and helping those around me? Moreover, synthesizing this beyond non-spanish (i.e. “No Sabo”) speaking experience?
  • How can my partner and myself prepare to form a family?
  • How can I AI-proof my data profession in a rapid growing (Gen)AI space?

I am curious about being in this dicotomy ofthe k-shaped bifurcation of the economy, which has gotten worse after COVID. There are other things I think about (e.g. impact of 4th gen US citizens like myself and ICE and re-emergence of McCarthyism)…but I am taking that day by day…

With these considerations, I lay out my Roadmap for the next 5 years.

1. Executing on Billingual Advocacy Outreach

I have been “Contributing my time, not my skills”, but for low-resourced areas, that outreach has been challenging to tackle. As I see in different coutnries like Mexico (e.g. Mexico City) people are able to talk about Urbanism and Sustainable Transportation. But I want to ditigatlly participate in those conversations with them, without the bariier of my own skills

I recall a time when I was a kid riding a bus a lady asked for the time (pre phone adoption)..I couldn’t say what. I would alwasy cringe at that memeory. and now I hate myself or not helping, at scale.

1.1 Share The Codes, with Gatekeeping in mind

This section can be summarized in the following:

1.3 Minimizing mis/dis-information in immediate family

omg it’s crazy how some relatives support a certain person, and it has affected my other family members (e.g. granparents). They still care for these politions they voted for and I didn’t do enough to help them, when they fall prey to minsinforamtion…and deeper dark material. So more focus on immediat efamily than trying to solve it at scale

(E.g. The Social dilemma, tying truth with memes, Q-Anon, echo chambers, etc).

This is something I am still thinking about how to solve. If you have a suitable solution in the meantime, feel free to let me know.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” –Mark Twain (via my Junior College Stats Professor)

2.0 Career

2.1 Exponential Growth

In 2016, I graduated with a Bachelors in Applied Mathematics and Minor in Economics. But surprisingly, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. From that time, I aspired to go into Data Science, which can be summarized in the opportunity to be featured in a Udacity blog “5-Year Plan For Career Success” in a Udacity blog post by Caroline Watson.

This year, I have never been in a position to take my next steps into Data Science. With that being said, I plan to do the following:

2.2 Sustainable tenure (Suvivor analysis?)

3.0 Personal

Here are some personal goals that I also would like reach:

Wrapping it all up

Looking back into past decade, I’ve updated my goals to center around more impactful altruistic contributions, meanwhile pursuing my career path & personal goals.

Now, I end with this Roadmap with two sentimental songs I heard as a kid.

Ignore the fact Kanye West is in the above video (I.e. ‘I miss the old Kanye…I hate the new Kanye.’)

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