A great interview by Nanette Collins - I remember meeting Peggy at a luncheon at DVCon in 2003 or so (she was sitting near the back of the room, like the article says), and she was very nice, well-informed, a good listener, and very pleasant to talk to. I have always liked the human perspective she gives to engineering and EDA stories. But I would not have guessed at her varied experience without reading this article.
Cheers,
Connie
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Peggy Aycinena: Engineer and Role Model
Thu, 2010-05-20 13:29 — Nanette Collins
If you’re a regular reader of the publications covering EDA, Peggy Aycinena is a familiar name. Covering the EDA industry since 1999, all of us have read avidly her bylined articles in ISD and DACeZine, on EDACafe, her own EDA Confidential and now EDAMarket, a collaboration with Gabe Moretti hosted on GABEonEDA. Some may have found her recently launched daily podcasts on EDA Confidential to check in on the latest news. Yet, for all of the thousands, dare we say millions, of lines of copy (journalist jargon for articles) and the visible presence that she has within the industry, Peggy has never agreed to be profiled until now.
In lingo familiar to anyone who follows her work, pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, prop your feet up on your desk and be prepared to be entertained. Yes, Peggy in person is as engaging as she is in print. The hope, dear reader, is that this article captures the essence of this terrific woman with a keen mind and remarkable family. And, it’s family that she talks about most.
It’s a sunny, breezy and beautiful day on the mid-Peninsula just south of San Francisco. We meet up at a coffee shop in the early afternoon within walking distance of Peggy’s home. She’s wearing a well-cared-for brown bomber jacket, maroon turtleneck and jeans, and carries a black backpack with her trusty laptop. She smiles and we begin our conversation.
Peggy Aycinena was born in San Francisco, the fourth of five children, while her father was in a radiology residency at U.C. San Francisco. After finishing, he joined the faculty at U.C.S.F., teaching and doing both clinical medicine and research. The family moved to the mid-Peninsula because Peggy’s mother didn’t want to raise her family in the fog of San Francisco, and the professor of medicine commuted back up to San Francisco for the next 25 years.
After all five children were out of high school, Peggy’s father accepted a post at University of Texas in San Antonio, but returned to California after five years because his wife missed their growing brood of grandchildren back in California. He briefly headed up the U.C. San Francisco radiology residency rotation in Fresno, and then spent the next 15 years teaching and doing research at U.C. Irvine, before retiring with his wife back to Northern California.
Her mother, who’s now 87, comes from Long Beach, Calif. As a young woman, she was a model, pretty and popular. Even today, she loves people, enjoys entertaining, and is completely different than her serious-minded, Quaker husband was. No matter. The marriage lasted 56 years. As different as they were, however, they both were completely committed to their lifetime work to promote understanding across religious faiths. Even at 87, Margaret Jones continues to be an active leader and speaker with the United Religions Initiative based on the Presidio in San Francisco.
Growing up in the Jones household was, in Peggy’s recollection, a combination of her mother’s great style and her father’s intellectual rigor. It was full of music, for each child was expected to play two musical instruments.
Peggy studied the piano for 12 years, and has served as a choir accompanist for many years as an adult. When she was four, she was given an accordian, the musical instrument she studied until she was seven, stopping because it was too heavy. Although, she admits that she still can perform a few rousing renditions of popular Christmas carols and “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” (If you’re attending DAC, be sure to be on the show floor Monday morning at 9 a.m. You will be in for a treat: ‘nough said.)
After high school, Peggy attended U.C. Berkeley. Within two days of the start of her freshman year, she decided to major in biophysics, while also taking classes in the Religious Studies Department. Quite a combination, eh? While Peggy was raised in the Methodist Church, her best friend was Jewish and a child of Holocaust survivors, from which came Peggy’s interest in Judaism. After several years of both science and relicious studies classes, Peggy went to declare her Jewish Studies major, but the then-head of Jewish studies said it was a stupid idea. She wasn’t Jewish, would need at least three more years to learn Hebrew, and clearly wasn’t going to be a Rabbi. Nix the idea.
Of course, that type of reaction was not new to her. Back in her freshman year, when she had presented herself to the Biophysics Department to declare her major. The admin in the office was barely willing to process her paper work, explaining that there really weren’t any young women in the program. After all, she was told, biophysics was a tough major, far more appropriate for young men. She declared the major nonetheless.
After fours years at Berkeley, studying biology, physics, and religion, Peggy dropped out, short of having earned her B.A. She worked full time for a year as an office manager for a large Ob-Gyn practice in Orinda, and then returned for two more quarters to finish her degree. Peggy says that every young woman should work in an Ob-Gyn office for a year if she wants to understand life.
When Peggy had first arrived at U.C. Berkeley, she had every intention of going to medical school. After spending a year in the doctors’ office, she decided to abandon that plan and go into engineering instead. She applied to, and was accepted at Georgetown University and San Francisco State University, but chose SFSU, for a variety of reasons. Georgetown’s price tag was $20,000 per year, while SF State was $200 per year. In addition, her fiance had just finished grad school and was starting a job at one of the “Big 8” accounting firms in San Francsico.
Peggy chose SF State and loved its small, intimate culture. She worked days in the City’s Financial District as an office manager and took courses at night toward an electrical engineering degree. She was the first woman to be given the Outstanding Student of the Year Award at SF State.
After she was married, she went to school full time, finished her engineering degree, and applied and was accepted at Stanford. (When she married, Peggy Jones became Peggy Aycinena and traded in one of the most common names in the U.S. for one of the most unpronounceable in EDA.)
She started at Stanford at the same time she started at NASA Ames Research Center, working as an electrical engineer in an aeronautical research group focused on avionics and vertical-lift-and-takeoff aircraft. Her particular research involved helicopter dynamics. She was part of the Stanford/NASA Honors program and worked as a full-time engineer, while studying for a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
Peggy was at NASA for four years, during which time she and her husband had their first child. While pregnant with their second, she left NASA to teach a survey course on electrical engineering at San Francisco State University. The course was designed for engineering students majoring in civil and mechancial engineers, and included three lectures a week, plus a lab. Four weeks after administering the final for the course, her second baby was born. Twenty months later, the third child arrived and with that, Peggy launched into a 10-year sabbatical from the workplace. Her world revolved around her children and volunteerism.
Meanwhile, her husband's carreer had come to involve a great deal of internationl travel, with his often calling home late in the evening for daily interactions with his children. Peggy calculates that in those first 10 years, he was gone a cumulative total of four.
Things changed in the mid 1990s, however, as her children grew to be teens. She accepted a position as an editorial assistant for a company in Foster City, Calif., two miles from her home. She soon accepted a position at a now-defunct company a mile in the other direction from her home. While it was a technical company, it had 18 editors who were journalists by training. According to Peggy, they argued over every placement of every comma and hyphen. She was amazed to learn that editors cared so much. Years later, she calls it her Editorial Bootcamp.
A defector from that company had joined a fledging publishing firm called Vericom in Mountain View, Calif, publishers ofSilicon Strategies and ISD Magazine. When there was an opening at Vericom for a scientific editor, Peggy got the call. She met with then-Managing Editor Mike Robinson, who introduced her to Executive Editor Jonah McLeod and Editor Tets Maniwa. While it was a great offer, the commute wasn’t. She declined the position.
Three months later, Robinson called to say that Vericom had been acquired by Miller Freeman and the office was moving to Borel Avenue in San Mateo. Incredibly enough, it was just six blocks from Peggy’s home. She accepted the offer.
Three months later, she was sitting in her new office in San Mateo when word came that Miller Freeman had purchased CMP, which within months consumed Miller Freeman. The next two and a half years included numerious dramatic transitions and various management teams based San Francisco, Manhasset, and Atlanta, as Peggy was named Editor of ISD. Eventually, Peggy was laid off in 2001 along with her entire team, just three weeks after her father died. Subsequently, her great young friends at the magazine scattered to the wind.
Since then, she’s found her voice and an audience through the emerging communications channels found on the Internet. With the launch of EDAMarket, she says that she feels newly energized about her work.
With coffee cup in hard and laptop open to download email, she begins to share her secrets about her success as an EDA influencer. She believes her background in science and engineering, plus growing up in an academic household, help her interact with the EDA industry every single day. She also admits that the people she admires most in EDA are the ones who have never lost their inate curiosity about the world, no matter how much success they’ve had. She is not a big fan of the proud and pompous.
She enjoys attending technical presentations and claims to set aside everything else to listen attentively, because Peggy, ever the engineer, says that there’s always something to learn technically. Peggy’s favorite spot to watch the presentation is the back of a crowded room. She claims she’s not interested in sitting in the front row, ready to spring up with the first question at the end of a presentation. Peggy may not have the first question, but it’s a vicarious thrill to other audience members when she stands up and asks a wonderfully nuanced question that often leaves the speaker squirming
Lest you think that she’s resting on her status as an EDA influencer, or her academic laurels, think again. She has found a new passion in Art History. It started innocently enough. Peggy signed up for a web design class at the College of San Mateo, and noticed that an art history course started right afterwards. Intrigued, she stuck around and was hooked.
Professor Janet Black teaches courses in antiquities, the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and Modern 20th Century art. Peggy took all four … twice, first without credits. The second time, she got course credits. Professor Black, inspired by her many devoted students, has applied for an Associate of Arts degree accreditation. Peggy may be among the first students to graduate from the College of San Mateo with an AA in Art History. Her Facebook page says she’ll be finishing in 2012.
If you’re reading this and assume Peggy’s chosen one historical period on which to focus, you’d be wrong. She’s studied a range, from Egypt and Mesopotamia, to the Tanagra figurines produced near Athens from 600 BCE to 200 CE, to the Gates of Paradise in Florence and San Francisco, and the sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy.
When she’s not studying with Professor Black, she might be found at one of the City’s museums, notably the Legion of Honor, one of Peggy’s favorite spots. With breathtaking views of San Francisco Bay, it’s a local favorite as well.
She and her husband travel extensively and make it a point to drop into the museums wherever they are. She mildly boasts that she’s seen 50-percent of the artwork illustrated in the definitive Art History book, Gardner’s Art through the Ages.
So passionate is she about this subject, that she says she would challenge the deans of any science department as to what constitutes the foundation of engineering and science; she now believes that it is Art History. With their degrees in computer science, physics and chemistry, however, her three children beg to differ – creating a lively and ongoing debate among the Aycinena family.
Another endeavor related to her interest in history is her effort to trace her family’s history. In fact, she became a member of New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston to do the research. To her great delight, she found that her father’s family was one of 11 Quaker families to found Nantucket, an island 30 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. On her mother’s side, she can trace her family all the way back to the Mayflower. Her mother is not necessarily interested in that factoid, however, insisting that America is at its best when it worries less about who founded the country, and more about who is leading it today.
Not to be outdone, Peggy's husband's family traces its roots back to the earliest Spanish settlers in Latin America. Her husband’s parents came to the United States when her father-in-law did his residency in urology at U.C. San Francisco. Peggy describes with a smile that her father-in-law’s medical specialty was the plumbing and her father’s was the cervical spine.
With a bit of wistfullness, Peggy says that she may regret not following in her father’s footsteps into medical school, a goal she’d had from the time she was quite young. However, her pride in being an engineer is apparent and her role as an EDA influencer.
What’s most important is her family. Her children are well and healthy. Her daughters live in the Boston area. One works fulltime there, and hopes to move on from her degree in physics from the Univerity of Washington to a second degree in nursing. The other daughter has just finished a Ph.D. in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) , and has accepted an offer at a high-profile Silicon Valley software company not in the EDA space. She and her husband will move to the San Francisco Bay Area this summer.
The youngest of the Aycinena children has a degree in Chemistry from Stanford, and works as a oncology research chemist for an East Bay pharmecuetical company. As we spoke, he and his dad were preparing to run the Bay to Breakers 12 K foot race, along with 60,000 other runners. Peggy has run B2B at least 10 times, her best time being in 2002 when she was in training with her son to run the Ancorage Marathon in June of that year, raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Of course, the elephant sitting in the coffee shop during our long conversation is the 10-year gap in Peggy’s professional life. She firmly says that she doesn’t regret staying home to raise her three children and, back then, she was not in the minority. With a husband traveling the globe, one of the parents had to be the primary caregiver to three children so close in age and that was Peggy.
Her advice to her daughters, when the time comes however, is to not leave the workforce to raise their childrem. She says there’s no social stigma to balancing a career and child rearing. Her belief is that if you have an education, you should use it. Engineers, Peggy found, with even a short gap in the resume are viewed as obsolete.
She says she greatly admires Mar Hershenson who’s juggling a high-profile career while raising three children. Hershenson is vice president of product development in the Custom Design Business Unit at Magma and this year’s recipient of the Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award.
As the conversation winds down, Peggy closes her laptop and stuffs it into her backpack to head home, and declines an offer of a ride. Instead, she purposefully strides down the street, looking intent and thoughtful. No doubt, thinking about her next article for EDA Confidential or GABEonEDA.
With an ongoing commitment to EDA, its technology and its people, and as an engineer by training, Peggy is just as much a role model as Mar Hershensen and the other Marie Pistilli Award winners. Although, it’s unlikely any of those women play the accordion.
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