Proudly Latino

Luis Llanos '10 Blazes Trails on Path to Self Discovery and Professional Impact

By Frank Kovarik '94

Luis Llanos ’10 has blazed trails in a variety of contexts, from being the first in his family to graduate from college in the U.S. to being the only person of color on a team providing answers to a Fortune 50 CEO. He has earned degrees at Notre Dame and Northwestern and plans to earn more. He has led conversations in boardrooms about some of the most transformative technologies of our time. He doubts, however, that he would be where he is today without St. Louis University High. “I am the man I am today because of SLUH,” Llanos says. “It shaped me into a Man for Others. I could not be more thankful.”

Llanos grew up in Cali, Colombia, where both of his parents were successful engineers. When he was nine, however, his family was forced to flee to the U.S. because of political unrest and the very real threat of violence. They ended up settling in south St. Louis, in a neighborhood dense with immigrants from around the world. Llanos’s engineer parents had to take minimum-wage jobs. After attending Mass one Sunday at St. Cecilia’s parish, Llanos’s family learned of a scholarship opportunity that would allow them to provide for Luis and his sister a Catholic education, which they had thought would be beyond their reach.

“It was the perfect place for us,” Llanos remembers. “St. Cecilia really understood so well how to help kids who didn’t know English get up to speed.”

Llanos learned about SLUH because of a visit to St. Cecilia by then-President David Laughlin and then-Director of Diversity Rob Evans. Both urged him to come to SLUH and told him that he could succeed there. “I didn’t believe them, but it was the best decision I have made,” says Llanos.

SLUH was a challenge. Llanos had to take are medial course in English before his freshman year. He felt underprepared compared to classmates who, as he perceived it, had already taken lots of advanced courses. Nonetheless, Llanos enthusiastically embraced his new school and found a climate that was nurturing and caring.

“The culture, and the way that teachers and students helped a student like myself have confidence, was just incredible. I only felt support from everyone around me."

Llanos thrived at SLUH, discovering a particular affinity for English and math; playing rugby; and finding a home in ACES (Association for Cultural Enrichment at SLUH).

Evans recalls, “At SLUH, Luis was deeply involved in program development for ACES and was instrumental in mentoring younger students. He took part in diversity presentations to peers in Jesuit schools around the country, always approaching his work with great empathy and thoughtfulness. I remember being so impressed with him that I introduced him to the founding executive director of a nonprofit focused on boys’ education—a connection that seemed fitting given his passion for equity and mentorship.”

As Llanos looked ahead to the next phase of his education, not understanding much about the college selection process in his adopted country, a parish priest mentioned to him that he “looked like a Notre Dame man.” Llanos remembers thinking, “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Llanos brought to Notre Dame not only the academic skills but also the spiritual values he had honed at SLUH.

“I think the most transformative years of my life were probably at SLUH, and I tell that to everyone. I live by the Man for Others mandate. Be a better person for those around you. Be the best of yourself. At Notre Dame I was able to put those into practice. My values were cemented, and my worldview was expanded.”

Majoring in mechanical engineering, Llanos got involved with Notre Dame Students Empowering through Engineering Development (NDSEED).Through this initiative, he spent an entire summer living in rural Nicaragua and building a bridge with residents of a small village. This immersive service experience was the culmination of a year’s worth of study and fundraising.

“It taught me that I don’t have to wait till I graduate to make a difference in people’s lives,” Llanos says in a video about the program.

As Llanos completed his degree, he began to feel a calling to a slightly different career path. He realized that “the things that brought me joy were not as technical. I wasn’t the type to sit in a room and do calculations all day.” He found himself drawn to management consulting, and he spent four years working as an analyst, consultant, and manager at Accenture, a global professional services company.

At Accenture, Llanos had experiences that helped him see what the nextstep in his journey should be.

“I figured out that if I wanted to go up in my career, I needed to be in the room where decisions were made: the ‘seat at the table’ mentality, and also understanding your voice at the table. I realized early in my career that I didn’t have that seat and I also couldn’t speak the language that folks were speaking at that table—and that was finance and strategy.”

Llanos earned an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business. After completing his degree, he began working for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), advising top 500 companies, with a particular passion for technology as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy. ESG, Llanos says, is “shorthand for how you prioritize environmental and social issues and create a governance to make sure you’re actually following through with that. How do you make sure a company is doing good for the world while still furthering its mission and being profitable? How do you ingrain that in the culture?”

At BCG Llanos honed his strategy, finance, and creative problem-solving skills, working on projects that ranged from creating a sell-side pitch book for a COVID testing company during the pandemic to setting the ESG strategy for a Fortune 100heavy equipment manufacturer. It was the latter project that would turn out to be one of Llanos’s most exciting experiences in his time at BCG.

“For six months we worked with them to create an approach for this client’s ESG strategy. It was the hardest problem I ever worked on. How do we continue to drive profit while prioritizing the environment and the social climate? We came up with a very tailored approach for them that allowed them to focus on both simultaneously. The client loved it and implemented it after we left.”

After three years at BCG, where he worked on over 20 cases, Llanos moved to the West Coast and took a position with Cisco as Senior Manager in their Strategy and Operations team, working on Cisco’s transformation to optimize recurring revenue by focusing on licensing simplification. This move was driven by Llanos’ belief that technologies such as AI/AGI and machine learning will be crucial for solving the most vexing problems that humanity faces today. He also wanted day-to-day experience in the technology industry working on those topics.

Llanos is deeply honored to be included in the illustrious group of SLUH’s Alumni Trailblazers, though he admits to feeling “humbled” in comparison to his colleagues. Nevertheless, he proudly embraces the term trailblazer. 

"My whole career, my whole life, I’ve accepted the role of being the first or the only one in the room from my background. I understood that I am creating a path that is not often followed by those from the communities that I come from,” Llanos says. “My hope is that by putting in the hard work I am able to create a path that others behind me can more easily follow in the future. Reading the profiles of many of the folks that are on there, I felt like they were doing the same. I am proud to be part of a group that is allowing the next generation to see faces in leadership positions that wouldn’t have been there for us when we were in their shoes.”

Llanos notes that, although he is “white passing,” he is incredibly proud of his Latino heritage and identifies as a person of color. “For a long time,I felt like my culture was not celebrated. It was all about assimilation and not letting people know you spoke Spanish. It was about not letting the Latino part of yourself show. Now I try to celebrate my culture and lead with it so that those that are just starting out have an example of a proud Latino leader, giving them permission to bring their genuine self to the workplace.”

Along with that renewed sense of pride in his heritage, Llanos also feels a responsibility to “always have a hand backwards to help whoever wants to follow in the path I followed. I developed this mentality during my time at SLUH with Mr. Evans—where he challenged me to be a mentor for the freshman ACES members; when I was at Notre Dame, I continued by always being available to SLUH students. And now in my career—any Latino or Black or, honestly, any person that wants help,I’m always willing to pick up the phone and talk to them. I think it’s something I’ve carried throughout my whole life, and it’s nice to be able to put at term to it. And I think it’s trailblazing. If I can help anyone take even one step forward, I will do it."