Gone Far: Seminole State alumnus Flavio Umeda Pacheco recruited by Google

Seminole State alumnus and Jack Kent Cooke (JKC) Scholarship winner Flavio Umeda Pacheco is using his passion and fascination concerning the intersection of business, technology, and law working for Google as a Legal Investigations Associate.

Before he learned about the JKC Scholarship, a highly selective scholarship for the nation’s top community college university transfer students, Flavio watched as another Seminole State College JKC scholar celebrated receiving the scholarship and getting accepted into Cornell University. This was a moment that helped shape the trajectory of the rest of his life.
 
Although born a U.S. citizen, Pacheco moved to Brazil with his mother at a very young age to be closer to his extended family. While in Brazil, Pacheco and his brother faced many dangerous situations, eventually causing his mother and step-father to send them back to the United States to pursue their education.
 
With little command of English and without the financial resources necessary to afford university, Pacheco enrolled at Seminole State College in 2014, but always felt that “just being a community college student” would not open the doors for success that he desired. He soon learned how wrong this perception could be.
 
Within a year, Pacheco had joined several on-campus clubs, including the Student Government Association, and was accepted into the Grindle Honors Institute. It was during a meeting with his honors advisor that he vividly recalls Sebastian Roubert, a 2015 JKC scholarship recipient, running into her office to celebrate his acceptance into Cornell, an ivy-league school that he could now afford to attend with the help of the JKC scholarship.
 
Pacheco set his sights on a similar path. In 2016, he remembers learning of his selection as a JKC scholar from then College president Dr. E. Ann McGee when she paid a surprise visit to his classroom to congratulate him.  
 
In the fall of 2016, Pacheco used his transfer scholarship to also enroll at Cornell, where he graduated in May 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in molecular cellular biology and a minor in law and society.
 
Pacheco quickly understood that his path was leading toward a career where technology intersects the law, and while he studies for the federal patent bar examination, he was recently recruited by Google to work in Silicon Valley as a legal investigations associate and policy specialist. In this role, he processes legal requests from international entities for user data disclosure in criminal investigations.
 
At this time, Pacheco is enjoying how much he is learning in his current position with Google, but says his five-year plan involves getting into a great law school – one that will concurrently allow him to earn his M.B.A. – so he can eventually use his skillset to impact the technology licensing and commercialization sides of intellectual property.

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flaviopacheco/