The road of life sometimes arrives at unlikely destinations. Just ask Alex Archila.

The Guatemalan-born president of Chevron Canada Resources never imagined as a boy playing on the streets of Guatemala City that he’d be heading a major oil and gas company on the cold Canadian prairies.

“I’ve been fortunate, because unlike most Guatemalans I’ve been able to see some of the world while doing work that I love,” Archila says.

The 42-year old CEO was recently honoured by the U.S.-based Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award Conference (HENAAC) as Hispanic Engineer of the Year for 2004.

While it may not carry much cachet in Canada, the tribute is well known in the Latino community south of the border. HENAAC was established in 1989 to honour and document the contributions of outstanding Hispanic American science, engineering, technology and math professionals working for U.S.-based companies.

“The message HENAAC wants to send to young Hispanics is that they can be successful in careers such as engineering, that they can reach for the top of major corporations such as Chevron,” Archila says.

He notes that only three or four per cent of engineering students in the U.S. are of Hispanic descent, despite the fact that Latinos make up roughly 25 per cent of the entire country’s population.

“If I can be a role model for these young people, then this award means a lot to me,” he says.

Archila’s name came out on top of more than 400 candidates, including executives and individuals from such North American entities as NASA, Boeing Co., IBM Corp., General Motors Corp. and the U.S. army.

Alex Archila

The prerequisites for claiming the HENAAC award include academic excellence, professional accomplishments and varied work experience. Equally important is the candidate’s record in community service.

Archila’s credentials in the latter category include efforts made while heading Texaco’s operations in Colombia; raising money for Colombian soldiers wounded in their war against leftist insurgents; and for his work with Operation Smile, a non-government organization that sends doctors abroad to perform surgery on children with cleft palates.

After completing high school at age 15, Archila spent two years studying electrical engineering in Guatemala before receiving a Texaco scholarship to attend the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

There he excelled in his studies, graduating magna cum laude.

Texaco hired him as a drilling engineer for a stretch in his homeland, starting him on a career that would eventually see him join ChevronTexaco’s 60-member management committee.

But professional success and international travel sometimes come at a price, which Archila relates to Hispanic students with whom he speaks.

He has lost two siblings to tragedy in recent years: A younger sister who along with her husband was killed in a car accident; and a brother nine years his junior who died of an aneurysm.

“When you’re away from home, it’s hard to keep contact with the family,” explains the father of two.

“This really hit home after my kid brother’s death and I realized that I really never had a chance to know him because he was eight or nine years old when I left Guatemala,” Archila says.

Leaving his home also meant abandoning working in the family business, Emisoras Unidas (United Radio Stations), the country’s largest media consortium.

Knowing his older brother would one day go on to head his father’s empire – his brother was officially named president of the company on Oct. 12 – Archila chose a different path.

Eventually, it led to nine different countries over two decades with Texaco, and later ChevronTexaco Corp. following the merger of the two energy giants.

Keeping connected with his culture during his stint in Calgary hasn’t been easy, given that there are fewer than 100 Guatemalans living in the city.

Still, the broader population of Latinos is much larger, giving him the occasional opportunity to tap into his roots. When he’s not running the company, Archila can be found moving to the intoxicating rhythm of salsa music at Don Quixote’s downtown, or at the annual Expo Latino held each August.

Professionally, he says his time in Canada has proved to be the most interesting of his career. The diversity of Chevron’s Canadian operations – which include conventional onshore and offshore programs in the Maritimes and West Coast, in addition to the company’s interest in the Athabasca Oil Sands Project – as well as the daily challenges the company faces working in harsh climates has tested his professional limits, he allows.

“The Canadian environment and the technical challenges can be very difficult, especially when you’re working in places like the Mackenzie Delta, where we’ve drilled some wells. It is really amazing stuff.”

While happy to be in Calgary, Archila knows his days in Alberta are ultimately numbered. Typically his postings have lasted no more than four years, and he expects the company to move him again by 2006.

“Wherever they send me next, I know I’ll take some of my Canadian experience with me,” he says.