4 October 2024 · Karmela Hadjioannou
In 2001, Gary Oppel graduated from the original Perth Amboy Magnet School when it was still referred to as Perth Amboy Vocational Technical School. Since his graduation day, Gary has been able to build his skillset professionally and eventually landed a job at Google as a Global Solutions Security Architect.
He attributes a lot of his success to the career training he received while he attended high school, “I wanted the hands on learning, I needed that difference. That’s what vocational school provided me and that's what really helped me,” said Gary. “It is more than what I expected. I wasn’t expecting to learn as much as I did and get into the things that I did.”
Walking into high school at Perth Amboy Vocation was a new and intimidating experience for Gary. Going to school outside his hometown and not knowing anyone was intimidating - everything was new. However, that initial fear of the unknown quickly changed. Gary was welcomed by teachers and his peers. They were all there for the same reason, to get the career focused training that they were looking for. Gary vividly remembers teachers such as Mr. Scott Katora making an impact on his life.
He vividly remembers Mr. Katora realized that Gary had potential but not necessarily the right tools to excel. So Mr. Katora got Gary those tools. Mr. Katora secured learning materials such as a computer that Gary could take a part and learn on. He kept Gary’s hands and mind occupied and busy which in turn kept Gary focused on electrical learning.
This progressively evolved and eventually Gary's interests turned to computer programming. Gary ended up teaching himself computer programming all because Mr. Katora believed in him. Mr. Katora did what teachers do best, which is to believe in their students and provide them with opportunities to learn about their different career fields and themselves.
Gary participated in Cooperative Vocational Education (CVE) and was paired with a company called ACE Electronic Alarms. This proved to be another staple in his career progression because the owner turned out to be a very good mentor for Gary. Post high school graduation, Gary ended up working for ACE Electronic Alarms for two years.
Gary has had an evolving career progression and says “A constant theme (throughout his career) is to never stop learning.”
“I started to build my network. Something I did not realize at the time was so important, but I have now learned it is very important and necessary.”
He has held various positions, such as Senior Network Engineer for Church & Dwight Co. Inc, to Technical Solutions Architect at Cisco. For every position, he developed a new skill set that helped lead him to the next opportunity. He has traveled the world to places such as Mexico, France, and the United Kingdom all through his career in technology. However, success never comes without setbacks and perseverance. Gary now has been with Google for over two and a half years, but he applied a total of 5 times starting in 2014 and it was not until his 6th attempt did he go through the interview process and land his first job at the company in 2022 as a Customer Engineer.
Valuable advice Gary would give to students today would be, “never stop learning, never stop gaining experience.”
