The loss of both parents and economic disadvantage could have come between an engineering degree and Christopher Lionel Calderón. But inner drive and a vision for himself powered Calderón through Providence Public Schools and four years at the University of Rhode Island.
“Everything is what you make of it,” Calderón says. “That’s the gift I received from my mother: the importance of preparing for the future.”
He is inspired by his late mother, Silvia Franco, who left her home in Guatemala seeking a better life in Providence. She died of breast cancer in May 2013.
“It was my mother who was a pioneer. She didn’t want to be limited. She was very independent,” Calderón says. His twin brother Michael is a Rhode Island College junior studying nuclear medicine technology. His father Lionel died accidentally in 2008.