Ivan J. Hurtado Jr.

About Me

My name is Ivan Hurtado. I am 40 years old, have been married for 12 years and we are expecting our first child in February 2019. I was born in Managua, Nicaragua in the midst of civil war. My family moved to San Francisco in 1981 and I have been living here ever since. I absolutely love the diversity in San Francisco, especially the cuisine. I really enjoy trying new foods from different cultures. I have been living in the same home for over 37 years and have seen many changes in my neighborhood.

I went to School of the Arts (SOTA) High School in San Francisco and studied video production. Back then video production was very different from what it is today, as we would shoot and edit on VHS, and the visual effects were minimal. This experience made me realize I had an artistic, creative side that I wanted to further develop.

After high school my uncle, brother and I invested in DJ equipment, including 2 Technics SL-1200 turntables. I remember spending hours and hours in the garage with my brother practicing on our turntables. Our garage became a popular hangout spot for all our friends. They would come over to hang out while my brother or I would spin records for hours on end. For my final project at Heald College we created two one-hour mixes that we recorded on vinyl to tape and then transferred the tape to CD. At the time, this technology was new and I got an A on my project. Plus a lot of people wanted those mixes so we made some copies and we were able to make some money. Cool!

We started DJing parties and weddings, but in time we started enjoying music production even more. We would take an instrumental of one track and the acapella of a different track and create remixes, which was a big thing at the time. Eventually we started creating our own tracks and writing our own lyrics. This brought us to create our own group that we called "The Fam", which consisted of my brother, a cousin and myself. We ended up recording over 40 tracks in English and Spanish, and performed at a couple of clubs in the city. After graduating from Heald College I began to work at the Academy of Art University in the IT department. There I met a film major who I became close friends with and we collaorated on a few projects as well. Although I enjoyed working on music and video production, I eventually realized it was more of a hobby for me and not something I would pursue professionally.

I worked in IT for about 7 years before I found my true calling, which is teaching. First I started as an IT Trainer at the Academy of Art University, teaching the staff learn how to use different types of software. I then found out my good friend Leonardo Sosa was working with youth and was looking for an instructor to teach IT skills, video production, college awareness and job preparedness classes. I decided to change careers and have been working as a teacher for more than 10 years now. I have worked with over 500 students between the ages of 10 to 70 years old. I have taught basic digital literacy, helping people who have never even touched a computer before, all the way to helping youth gain Cisco certification or to prepare for the A+ exam, which is an entry level IT technician certificate. I've also taught financial literacy classes, audio production and video editing classes, a bank teller training program, ESL classes and now I am even helping with an HTML/CSS/Javascript programming class. I truly enjoy teaching and feel there is no better reward than to see the reaction a student has when the knowledge you are trying to convey clicks in their brain and now they grasp the concept.

If you would like to know more or have any questions feel free to reach out to me. Thanks for dropping by!

Back to top