6 minute read
Meet the Aguiars: Making the Most of Each Day
www.BlackhawkLivingCA.com @BlackhawkLivingCA #BlackhawkLivingCA
By Megan Scott, Resident since 2010
A family of many talents, Noela, Sunil, and their son Aidan all find joy pursuing multiple hobbies. Both tech industry experts by day, Noela and Sunil also share a love of the outdoors, adventure and travel. Noela loves to practice photography, bake, cook, decorate cakes and cookies, and play ping pong. Sunil is a lover of all things sports, especially basketball and football and you can find Aidan playing multiple sports including basketball, soccer, baseball and football. Aidan is also a huge animal lover and music fan. As you can imagine, with so many passions, there is rarely a dull moment in the Aguiar household.
Sunil and Noela met through a common friend. It began as a long distance relationship as Sunil lived in the Bay Area and Noela was in St Petersburg, Florida. Over a period of a year and a half, they made frequent trips to meet each other, sometimes in each other’s cities, and sometimes in other cities like Chicago, LA and NY. “On my birthday Sunil treated me to a trip to New York, on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year! I still remember us freezing our tails off despite wearing all the winter attire! That trip is one of the most memorable trips we’ve had. That’s where we watched our first Broadway show together. After spending Christmas in New York, we headed to Miami and it was interesting going from the freezing cold to the humid heat. We were still wearing thick jackets while strolling on the beach,” says Noela.
They were married on December 29, 2005 in Goa, India where Noela grew up. She says she is grateful to have been able to be married in such a special place,
Both born in Mumbai, India, Noela grew up in Goa and moved to the US shortly after having started a career in IT. Sunil moved to California with family when he was 13-years-old and resided in Huntington Beach. The couple have found rewarding careers in the tech industry. Noela holds a Master’s degree in Management Information Systems from the University of South Florida in Tampa, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Goa Engineering college in India. She worked in IT across various verticals including Cisco Systems, Yahoo, Vmware, and Nationwide Insurance. “After having spent many years in IT, I jumped the fence to work in a more customer facing role as a Customer Advisory Manager at Collibra, a software manufacturing company founded in Brussels and headquartered in New York. Collibra helps customers find, understand and trust their data, and enables customers to make critical business decisions based on this trusted data. Having worked in various roles over the years, I have to say that this one has been the most fulfilling. The role is focused on relationship building, and hence involves quite a bit of travel. It gives me a chance to work with names we can relate to, such as Starbucks, Nike, Twitter and Adobe. In this role, I am the fulcrum for all things Collibra for the customer, so I love that I have to work with all the organizations from within Collibra. I love that I can make an impact not only at Collibra but also with the customer, solving real business challenges, and deriving real value, be it in terms of increased revenue, cost avoidance, or risk mitigation,” says Noela.
Sunil has a Master’s degree from the University of Arizona and works at Nutanix, a converged infrastructure company in San Jose. He has spent around 20 years working in the Silicon Valley and has built products at a number of smaller start ups as well as larger software companies including eBay, PayPal, Yahoo and Citrix. Recently he says he has been involved in Enterprise software,
A 5th grader at Tassajara Hills Elementary School, Aidan is very active in sports. He plays basketball and is a huge Warriors fan. He also loves baseball, soccer and football. Aside from ball sports, Aidan’s also great with anything that involves wheels and balance. He’s great at skateboarding, roller skating and hoverboarding. He loves his BMX bike and wants to be able to do more tricks with it. He has an artistic side as well and enjoys drawing and writing. He has created many comic books with illustrations. His artistic nature spreads into music and dancing also. He has taken dance classes and even won a dance award.
The family just recently expanded to include an adorable dog. Aidan has been patiently awaiting a dog for years and now they can’t get enough of their mini Bernedoodle, named Ziggy.
The Aguiars love to travel and Noela says they try to visit somewhere new every year, “We usually try and travel to new locations. Some of our past trips have taken us snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, as well as sailing around the British Virgin Islands. The latter being the most interesting since we were able to charter a Catamaran and sail around the islands while dropping anchor where we wanted to. Mexico is one of our favorite haunts and we make it a point to make a trip there every other year.”
Giving back of their time and talents is a top priority for Noela and Sunil. The family attends St Isidore’s Catholic Church in Danville, and regularly volunteer at Tassajara Hills Elementary School. Sunil used to be on the Foundation Board at the school, and Noela helps with photography at various events. They also contribute to a charity organization called Kiva. In addition, Noela has participated in several Tour de Cure fundraising cycling events in Napa, to raise money for diabetes and Sunil contributes to the American Cancer Society due to a close family member’s diagnosis of the disease.
After living in Fremont, the couple visited some friends in the Blackhawk area and became very impressed with the area. “We loved the location so much so that when we decided to move, we looked for places in Blackhawk, and have never looked back since. We’ve lived on Whispering Oaks Drive for seven years and we love how beautiful and green the area is, and the fact that it is so very family oriented. We feel honored to be a part of this community. We love our neighbors and we all look out for each other. We also have a lot of friends who live in Blackhawk, so it’s always a great time hanging out at each other’s houses, or at the country club,” says Noela.
Do you know a neighbor who has a story to share? Nominate your neighbor to be featured in one of our upcoming issues! Contact us at mscott@bestversionmedia.com.
