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Before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey, DataLogic founder Rick Ledesma attended U.C. Berkeley where he received his degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, with an emphasis on Computer Science. Rick completed several advanced independent studies including one on Computers in the Workplace, and another on Cognition and Computers. Rick was interested in not only programming, but how people interact with software. Rick's interest in computers was natural, being that he was attending college within 50 miles of the Silicon Valley at a time when the personal computer industry was exploding there. Berkeley was where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs went to college in the 70's before starting a company they called Apple! While a student, Rick read a biography of Steve Jobs called The Journey is the Reward, which emphasized the philosophy of Apple's founder. (Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, a Berkeley dropout, returned to college after Apple's great success and graduated from U.C. Berkeley while Rick was a student there!) Unlike any other place in the world, the Silicon Valley and surrounding area was steeped in the new computer age and way ahead of its time. The region around Berkeley had produced such high profile companies as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Atari, and Cisco. The success of those companies had a profound impact on Rick's future plans. He was fascinated by how computer software could change the world and was eager to start spreading the word to other areas. After college, Rick returned to his hometown of Harlingen, Texas, where he found the south Texas area at least a decade behind the Silicon Valley in computer technology. There was a dearth of computer professionals. The local vocational college (TSTC) was teaching older technology that did not come close to what was being taught in the Silicon Valley in Northern California, in the regions surrounding Stanford and Berkeley. Anel Suarez Responding to the demand in the area, Rick started a hardware/software company and soon had contracts with major banks and city governments. His company was called Ledesma Data Systems. Rick adopted the philosophical underpinnings of the Apple Corporation ("The Journey is the Reward") as the cornerstone of his own company. | 