Nery Salguero

Joann's husband. Milly and Luna's dad.Everything else here is detail.

Austin, Texas. By way of Guatemala and New York.

Nery and Joann with their daughters Milly and newborn Luna — Luna's first month. All four of us.

If you wanted to know me, this is what I would tell you.

01Given

The village thatraised me

I came from Guatemala at twenty-four with no English and no plan past finding work. I have never gotten anywhere on my own.

Here are the people who played a crucial role when it mattered most.

Abuelita Mencha with Nery as a boy — Abuelita Mencha

Tia Olga in front of the Eiffel Tower at night — Tia Olga

Sandra holding Milly and Luna in the Guatemalan highlands — Madre

Small acts of kindness, when you have nothing, change everything.

Love and kindness are the reason I moved forward.

02Earned

A childhood portrait of Nery in Guatemala — Guatemala, long before any of this.

Then I wentto work

Before any of the rest of it, I boxed.

Boxing taught me to keep my eyes open. When a hit is coming, looking away won't stop it. You learn to process pressure in real time, take the hit, and figure it out. You fail often, but you always get back up.

Nery boxing in the ring as a teenager in Guatemala — Sixteen.

Nery in the corner with his coach the night he won his first national title — The night I won my first national title.

I studied architecture in Guatemala. I never finished, but it got me out of my town and into the city. The library, new ideas, learning to think in space. I still use that every day.

Roofing came next and it kept me for twenty years, most of that on commercial jobs in New York. Local 8, union card, February mornings on flat roofs. Schools, post offices, federal buildings, towers. The Moynihan Train Hall. Facebook's offices in the old Farley Building. You can walk into those, which is the part I like.

Somewhere in the middle of it I went back to school at night. City Tech, CUNY, a bachelor's in Facilities Planning and Management, magna cum laude, earned while working full time.

On a New York job site, you can have five men from five countries with no shared language, and the project still gets completed. Somebody shows you once, slowly. Somebody translates. Everyone finds a way around whatever is in the way.

Three roofers looking out over a rooftop toward the Manhattan skyline

Workers in harnesses on a Manhattan rooftop high above the street — Twenty years of this.

Nery and Joann kissing on an empty Manhattan street on their wedding day — I married her in Lower Manhattan.

03Built

The four of us

Joann is the love of my life. Nothing on this page makes sense without her in it.

We met in New York. We got married there and both girls were born there. In the fall of 2023 we moved to Austin. The company offered it, we were ready, and we went. The move was not smooth. It was still the right call. The girls have room to run and the life we have here would have been hard to build in New York.

Joann is the steadiest person I know. She carries more than anyone sees, she covers what I am short on, and she never keeps score. Whatever I get right, she is usually the reason.

There is no version of my life that works without her.

Joann on the floor with Milly and Luna, all three laughing — Joann, doing the thing she is best at.

Nery holding Luna asleep against his shoulder — The good part of the job.

Three languages

Joann's family is Malaysian Chinese and mine is Guatemalan, so Milly and Luna are getting all of it at once. Spanish from my side, Mandarin from hers, English everywhere else. They watch two families do things two different ways and to them neither one is unusual. It is just family.

I did not grow up with that, and I think it is the best thing we have handed them. Not the languages, although those help. The part where you learn early that there is more than one right way to do almost anything.

The family at a pumpkin patch in Texas — A Texas fall, which is mostly still summer.

Nery, Joann and the girls with family in a garden in Germany — Germany, with Joann's side of the family.

Milly running down an empty road in Malaysia — Malaysia. Milly had the whole road to herself.

Joann, Nery and the girls by the Brooklyn Bridge with the Manhattan skyline behind them — We enjoyed New York.

Joann's extended family gathered by a lake in China — I'm in there somewhere. Find me.

We go back to Guatemala whenever we can.

A long family lunch table in Guatemala — Lunch at my sister's in Guatemala. I love every one of them.

Family gathered around a table in Guatemala — So the girls know where I come from.

Joann walking with Milly and Luna in Guatemala City — Joann and the girls in Guatemala City.

04Passing it on

What I'mdoing now

I am the Deployment Applications Manager at GAF Energy. We make Timberline Solar, a roof that happens to be built out of solar shingles.

In plain terms, my job is to find out what breaks before the installers do. I test new products on real roofs, fly out when a job site hits a problem, and write the instructions people will actually follow. Years on the roof first and often in the meeting now, so I can usually tell when a plan that looks fine on paper will not survive a Tuesday in the field.

For the Timberline Solar 2 training, I wrote and presented the content in both English and Spanish — recording two native versions, not just reading subtitles. A lot of the best installers in this country work in Spanish and they should be able to learn in their own language.

Nery demonstrating a Timberline Solar shingle to a group of installers

I arrived here without a word of English. Now I teach in two. I think about that sometimes.

I am not satisfied easily, even when the result is good. Especially then. I will look at something that worked fine and see the version that would have worked better. I have also broken things here and gotten plenty wrong, and GAF Energy backed me anyway, more than once.

I am an FAA certified drone pilot, which is genuinely useful on roof inspections (and also just fun). But the job also puts me on a commercial plane most weeks. I fly out to solve problems, train crews, and simplify processes. Sometimes I need to build things; sometimes I need to tear them down. Curiosity, creativity, and determination give me the room to explore it all.

Nery in a harness beside a GAF Energy van, shaking hands with a contractor — Most of the work still happens on somebody's roof.

Nery, Joann, Milly and Luna waving from their seats on a plane — Sometimes they come with me.

05Plainly

What Igo by

Straight talk lands better with me than anything dressed up, and that is how I talk to people. I am working on the softer version of it. Public speaking is harder for me than it looks and so is a room full of strangers, so I walk into those rooms on purpose. The girls should see the hard thing done, not just hear about it.

Two things I tell myself

Be water This is part of me now. When things get hard, this is the phrase I come back to.
Every encounter is an opportunity I am still growing into this. I have seen what it does when I actually live it.

Five things I look for in people

These are the people I like working with. I try to be this way too.

CoachableYou can take a correction. So can I.
On timeShowing up when you said you would tells people you respect them.
A little extraThe last ten percent that is easy to skip.
A team playerI have never done anything good on my own.
Gives a damnYou care whether the work is good.

Degrees and experience have their place. But after working with hundreds of people across different cultures, trades, and environments, I know that having these five things is much more powerful than what is written on a résumé.

Say hello

If you got this far, thank you. Now I'm just missing your story. Tell me about you.

nerysalguero@gmail.com

Nery, Joann, Milly and Luna in front of their house in Austin