Chess and Life experience

Noted Technologist Magaly Spector to Join UT Dallas as VP for Diversity, Community Engagement

Plans to Improve Accessibility for Underrepresented Groups

RICHARDSON, Texas (June 13, 2007) — Noted technology innovator and leader Dr. Magaly Spector, one of the most visible Hispanic females in the fields of science and engineering in the United States, has been appointed to the newly created position of vice president for diversity and community engagement at The University of Texas at Dallas. Her role will be to promote diversity at all levels of the university.

Spector, a Cuban-born émigré to the U.S., is a physicist and engineer by training. She is a Bell Labs Fellow who has held key research and development management positions during her 25-year career at Alcatel-Lucent. She was also deeply involved in a number of diversity initiatives for the company, a successor to AT&T.

…From humble beginnings in Cuba, where her family was “very poor,” Spector pursued academics with a passion. She graduated with highest honors from high school and won the Cuban Scholar Chess Championship.

As a young mother with an infant daughter, she enrolled full-time as a student at Havana University, where she earned a License in Physics degree in 1977. She continued to hone her chess skills during that period, winning the university’s chess championship every year during her undergraduate studies, and eventually taking the national Cuban chess crown.

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