Growing up in New York City, Angel Montesdeoca woke up at 5:00 a.m. each day to start the long commute to a competitive high school in Queens. Angel was focused on building a different future, but he knew college affordability would be a defining challenge for his low-income family. 

“We wore our tattered jeans almost as badges of honor,” he says of his family and parents, who often worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. “You’re born into your circumstances, but that doesn’t mean that your future is fixed. That resilience, the belief that your starting point does not define your ceiling, is something I see across the QuestBridge community.”

Without his own personal computer, Angel used library computers to research college and scholarship opportunities. When he discovered QuestBridge, he proactively reached out to other QuestBridge Scholars for guidance navigating the college application process.

Applying to college was challenging, but it paid off: Angel ultimately attended Columbia University as a QuestBridge Scholar, where his sense of what was possible began to expand.

He leaned into new experiences and was determined to “try every single thing once,” from exploring fields like medicine and law to learning about different companies and industries.  “I wanted to gather data points,” he says. “I wanted to understand what truly drives people and let that become my compass, so I could say, ‘okay, I could see myself doing that.’” In his early undergraduate years, Angel founded an organization connecting college mentors with high school students navigating the college application process. After learning natural language processing, Angel helped transform the nonprofit into an AI-driven edtech platform built to scale access to college guidance, helping thousands of students gain admission to top universities and earn scholarships. The company was later acquired by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Driven by his desire to meet and understand builders, Angel spent a year in venture capital, helping invest and scale technology companies.  It was through this experience that he realized his own passion was building products and teams. “Through trial, error, and countless conversations, I realized I’m a builder,” Angel says.

To gain more experience in building products, Angel went on to work at Facebook (now Meta) and later Google, where he deepened his understanding of how artificial intelligence could be applied to solve real-world problems at scale. These experiences ultimately led him to IBM, where he has helped transform businesses, scale AI-driven products into nine-figure ventures, and lead global teams.

Today, Angel serves as Chief of Staff for Z Software at IBM, where he helps run a multi-billion-dollar business building AI-driven, mission-critical technologies that power many of the world’s largest enterprises. Recently, Angel helped lead the hiring of hundreds of college graduates as he continues building the next generation of technology leaders. Outside of work, Angel continues to give back by serving on the Alumni Board of QuestBridge and mentoring technology startups across New York City. “QuestBridge taught me that talent is everywhere, even if opportunity is not,” he says. “A big part of my journey has been building technology, teams, and communities that help more people realize what’s possible.”