18-year-old Utahn works for Microsoft Stores, gave TED talk

18-year-old Utahn works for Microsoft Stores, gave TED talk

(Nate Wagner)


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SALT LAKE CITY — Graduating from high school can be a daunting and confusing time of life, but a freshly graduated Utah teen has already taken the world by storm and is building quite the impressive resume.

It isn’t peculiar that 18-year-old Valeria Rodriguez recently graduated from Hillcrest High School or that she’s headed to Westminster College in the fall, but it is unusual that she works for Microsoft Stores.

Rodriguez has been working since she was a 13-year-old babysitter, but her jobs have since escalated greatly. She said when she was 14, she got nominated to become a People to People Student Ambassador and studied at Johns Hopkins University for a few weeks in the summer. To pay for that experience, she got a job as a sweeper at a middle school.

“It just started from there. I realized I really like working, and I learn a lot in the work environment, and I’m really passionate about my career and my love for business, so I realized, ‘How can I put the two together?'” she said.

Rodriguez said she doesn’t think it’s necessary for people to wait until after high school or college to start doing what they love.

In high school, she worked at Xcel Fitness, which is where she fell in love with business, she said.

“I realize when I went to work each day and I was able to see just how a business runs each day and the ups and downs of it, what customers like, what customers don’t like, what employees like, what employees don’t like, just the whole structure and infrastructure of business started to fascinate me, and I realized well this is something I might be interested in,” Rodriguez said. “And it turns out, I am very interested in it, and it turns out that it did make a huge change in my career and what I was passionate about for the rest of my teenage years.”

Since she got that job, she became a patient care specialist at a medical imaging facility in South Jordan called U.S. MRI, an intern for Impact Hub Salt Lake and a marketing intern for anne b designs, she said.

(Photo: Nate Wagner)
(Photo: Nate Wagner)

In addition to her responsibilities at U.S. MRI, Impact Hub Salt Lake and anne b designs, she works for Microsoft Stores. “Right now I am a product adviser for them, and basically my role is it comes down to helping every person that walks through our doors,” she said. “I mean we’re committed to being a part of the fabric of the local communities in which we operate, and it’s such an amazing company to work for I’m just so excited.”

According to Tehra Dunn, assistant store manager for Microsoft Store at City Creek Center, Rodriguez is one of their youngest employees.

"As a product advisor, Valeria will help engage with consumers in the store to discover various technologies across a broad range of devices to meet their individual needs and exceed their expectations," Dunn told KSL.com in an email.

Rodriguez's jobs didn’t stop her from being involved in extracurricular activities in high school, where she was on the swim team, on National Honor Society and in DECA. In November, she gave a TEDxYouth talk.

It sounds like her future will be bright.

“Honestly … I’m going into business school at Westminster in the fall, but when it comes down to it, yeah I want to work in business, but I just want to be able to wake up each morning and love what I do. And that’s something that I look for in everybody that is working around me and the people that do wake up every morning and love and are passionate about what they do whether it’s work or their career, that’s honestly that's my goal,” she said.

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