Challenges & Opportunities: Jessica Gonzalez of HeavyConnect and Rivka Garcia

Excerpts from a profile published Feb. 15, 2017:

HeavyConnect is synonymous when it comes to Salinas and agtech. It is one of the few agtech companies launched in the city with a mission to hire local talent ...

Rivka Garcia – A young pioneer

Rivka Garcia loves to tinker and as the front-end developer for HeavyConnect, this is an essential part of her job — inventing, innovating, finding solutions for farmers.

Garcia, 21, interned with HeavyConnect while at the CSin3 program at Hartnell College, where she was a member of the initial class. While in college, she and a fellow classmate, Leticia Sanchez, created a BlueTooth asset tracker, which syncs with a tractor or other chosen implements.

She accepted a full-time job as the lead developer at HeavyConnect.

Born and raised in Salinas, Garcia has agriculture in her lineage. Her paternal grandfather is from Jalisco, Mexico, and was a farmworker who split his time between the U.S. and Mexico. He also owned a ranch and his seven sons and five daughters worked on the farm. ...

Jessica Gonzalez – Daughter of an entrepreneur

At first glance, Jessica Gonzalez could pass for a college student. At 26, the petite Gonzalez is soft spoken, if not at first shy. But her silence is often a façade to her being deep in thought: She is introspective, inquisitive and thoughtful — especially when it comes to making decisions personally and professionally.

As with many startups the hours can be long and undefined. On many days, she’s either at meetings or can be found at the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, where Gonzalez is CTO of HeavyConnect.

Gonzalez, 25, joined HeavyConnect full time in December 2015 this past January as a co-founder. ...

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Photo: HeavyConnect Co-founder Jessica Gonzalez and Rivka Garcia, front-end developer. (Photo by Adriana Sisfontes)