Engineering a Better Tomorrow

Lusnail Haberberger remembers what it was like being a brand new engineer. After graduating from the master’s program at California State University in Los Angeles, Haberberger was eager to apply her knowledge in the workforce and begin her career in electrical engineering — a passion she’d had for as long as she could remember. She earned excellent grades throughout her undergraduate and graduate careers and was as well-versed in her field as any of her cohorts. And yet, she could not find a job. 

“I interviewed over 35 times, and nobody would give me a chance,” Haberberger recalls. “Granted, it was 2008 and the economy was down, but I’d graduated with honors. Interview after interview, nobody would give me a chance. I attribute some of it to the fact that I required H-1B visa sponsorship, but I also think it was my accent. It was hard for people to get past. That’s why I don’t mind if someone has a heavy accent. If they spend time with us here, that will improve. Besides, it’s easier for us to teach someone English than to teach them how to do electrical design.” 

Today, as founder and chief executive officer of the engineering consulting firm LUZCO Technologies, based in Maplewood, Haberberger now finds herself in a position where she is able to draft her own hiring priorities. Founded in 2017, the boutique firm has quickly become a major player in the electrical engineering industry, working hand-in-hand with major electrical providers, including Ameren Missouri, to design and implement the systems that power communities. In less than a decade, LUZCO has grown from just a handful of employees to a staff of 122 and is known for delivering excellent results for its clients. 

Haberberger attributes LUZCO’s success to the high-quality technical work her team produces, but in her experience, that cannot be separated from the company’s core values: “familia, diversity, and leadership.” Much more than a mission statement, Haberberger and her team live these values in everything they do, creating an environment in which each person feels heard, empowered, and encouraged to find balance in their work and professional lives. 

The firm’s commitment to its employees has earned LUZCO a spot on the St. Louis Business Journal’s 2025 “Best Places to Work” list and also won the publication’s community impact award, which, according to the Business Journal, “recognizes a company that demonstrates exceptional commitment to community service and philanthropy.” As Haberberger notes, LUZCO’s currency may be electrical engineering, but its mission is to be a place that helps its people grow and thrive. 

This mission was Haberberger’s guiding principle when she founded LUZCO. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, to a mother and father who were both engineers, Haberberger grew up knowing that she wanted to follow in their footsteps and settled on the electrical side of the field after developing a fascination with cellphones as a teenager. 

“I was in high school and wanted to know why I could communicate over this wireless device over long distances,” Haberberger says. “That’s why when I speak to middle and high schoolers I tell them to give me any passion they have and I can guarantee I can find an engineering degree that can come of it. Clothing, skincare, makeup, video games — it’s there.”

At the age of 16, after losing her father a year earlier, Haberberger moved by herself to Washington state. Her mother had promised her father that all of their children would learn English, and she felt that immersing Haberberger in the language abroad would be the best path forward. Haberberger admits that the transition from Venezuela to the Pacific Northwest was a difficult one, but she stuck with it and eventually enrolled in community college classes for engineering. 

When it came time for her undergraduate education, she moved somewhere more in her comfort zone: Austin, Texas, which was much warmer and only a four-hour flight from Caracas. She had every intention of returning there after school, but she met her now-husband in Austin; after graduation, they both moved to Los Angeles, where she pursued graduate studies, and they eventually found themselves in Rochester, New York, for her husband’s job. There, as a young mother trying to balance her career and children, she found herself struggling to find her way in the corporate world. It was a seminal experience. 

“After my second boy was born, this whole mother guilt came in where I felt like I had to be the perfect mom and be there for my boys without sacrificing my career,” Haberberger says. “That notion also came from my mom because I saw her give up her career for my dad and her children. Even though they had an incredibly loving relationship, she always resented it. I saw that and didn’t want to give up my professional identity because I am a mother, but at that time, the industry was risk-averse and not progressive with young parents. I saw my mom struggling to get back into the industry after being out of it for so long. It was already hard being a Latina engineer. I knew the corporate world was not going to give me the answers I was looking for, so I realized that I had to start my own path.”

Haberberger also knew that support from her husband’s parents, who live in St. Louis, would be essential to her career success, so the family relocated from Rochester to put down both personal and professional roots in the Midwest. Haberberger founded LUZCO with the idea of being more than just a great engineering firm — she wanted it to be a model workplace.

“I wanted to be the change that I wanted to see in the world,” Haberberger says. “I wanted to become a role model for other immigrants and especially women of color, letting them know that if you don’t see what you are looking for, you can create your own path. I also wanted to create a workplace where I would be happy showing up every day and where I was surrounded by people who love and support you regardless of what stage you are at in life. I was lucky that I was in the right place at the right time and there was a need for different perspectives.”

Maria Ines Goncalves, a project manager analyst supervisor at LUZCO, embodies Haberberger’s vision for the company.

“I am not a native English speaker, and I also embody one of the other pieces of diversity because unlike the technical experts here, I am not,” Goncalves says. “I came from Portugal and my experience was that of a manager for customer service experience and in training. I’d moved to St. Louis and took time off to support my family, and when I decided to go back to work, I was older and in a stage in my life where my priorities were different. I wanted to find a company with purpose and was drawn here because of the energy of the people and the company. Here, I feel like I am a part of something and that I belong.”

Goncalves’ experience is a common one at LUZCO, where Haberberger has encouraged a “right person, right seat” hiring approach. The company sees diversity in terms of industry as well as identity — employees who may not be technically “aligned,” as they describe it, for every role can still find a career path at the firm. Ado Rizvanović, an electrical engineer and engineering supervisor at LUZCO, has seen firsthand how this recruiting mindset has benefited employees and the firm.

 “Someone on our team was originally doing a different part of engineering that involved physical design, and we could see it wasn’t clicking for him,” Rizvanović says. “We ended up showing him a different side of the engineering process and saw his eyes light up, and he said, ‘Wow I want to do this.’ The lightbulb went off and he is doing very well now.”

Meanwhile, designer Ronald Gales is proud to hold the distinction of being the company’s first employee outside of the executive team, and he notes that he was drawn to LUZCO because of its diversity and the fact that it is owned by a woman of color — something rare in the engineering field. 

“At my last job, I was told I was hired because a diversity (rule) came out, and that only after they hired me did they start seeing how educated I was,” Gales says. “It made me think that this is what the engineering field is like — all one color and that I am an anomaly. Once I saw (Haberberger), I realized there are more people like me in engineering. It opened my eyes to a whole other world.”

Haberberger likes to joke that diversity is the “most beautiful accidental core value” at LUZCO. By being the change she wanted to see in the industry, she was able to see that vision come to fruition in her own workforce.

“How many engineers do you know who are women? Out of those women, how many are women of color and out of those, how many are entrepreneurs or occupy the C-suite?” Haberberger says. “It diminishes at each level, and it became a value because I was looking for different perspectives and the only way to do that is by welcoming diverse people. By combining my desire to be the change in terms of representation with my wanting diversity of perspective, it translated into minorities and immigrants reaching out. They saw themselves working for a female Latina and wanted to be part of that. We gave them unique chances.”

Goncalves feels this every day at work.

“As an international person, (the culture) really helps you feel welcome and it feels like a safe place,” Goncalves says. “I don’t feel judged, and I know it’s OK for me to look different, to speak in a different way, and to work in a different style. That is valued — they want to know what we have to bring to the table and they listen to you. It helps people to not shy away from their thoughts and skills and to feel safe and respected.”

In addition to diversity, LUZCO’s other core values, “familia and leadership,” exist to empower her employees and see them as whole people. Work-life balance is not simply tolerated at LUZCO, it is encouraged, and employees see themselves as one another’s mutual support systems. 

Haberberger also believes that everyone who works at LUZCO should be empowered to grow in their personal and professional lives, which is why the team recently launched an employee-initiated program, LUZCO University, which offers training and continuing education to anyone who has a particular need or area of interest. 

For his part, Rizvanović was drawn to the company because of its core values and the way it empowers him in both his personal life and his career. In just five years of working at LUZCO, he’s grown from an entry-level engineering position into a supervisory role thanks to the training LUZCO has either provided or made possible for him to attend. 

“During my time here, I’ve done technical training and leadership training both through LUZCO U and outside of the company,” Rizvanović says. “The growth I’ve had because of that is something I can really see.” 

While Haberberger believes in the core values of “familia, diversity, and leadership” as a matter of principle, she and her team also see them as differentiating LUZCO from other electrical engineering firms. 

“There are 256 firms in the U.S. that do what we do, so it’s very competitive,” Haberberger says. “One of the things we say to our clients is that we are unique and differentiated by our culture, which comes out of our core values. We care so much — every single employee takes such pride in their work, and they know how it impacts their community and family members. This translates into quality and engagement for our clients. We do the right thing and treat others how we would want to be treated.”

One of those clients, Ameren Missouri, works with LUZCO on a range of projects, including engineering design, project management, and voltage optimization, which is employed to improve electrical grid efficiency and reliability. Haberberger sees Ameren as a natural partner for both LUZCO’s work and its mission because of how, in her experience, the company has championed the St. Louis community. 

“It has been a beautiful relationship,” Haberberger says. “They are amazing clients who believe in their mission. They truly believe in helping small businesses, who in turn help their work families and in return become examples for the community.”

Ameren is one of the reasons Haberberger says that LUZCO could not have happened anywhere other than St. Louis. The other reason is how supportive the community’s innovation and entrepreneurship support ecosystems are across industries. It’s something she noticed immediately upon moving to town from Rochester when she was in the beginning stages of launching LUZCO. She credits this environment and support system with helping her grow LUZCO and she is especially grateful to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro St. Louis and St. Louis Business Diversity Connect for their help. 

“When I came up with the idea for LUZCO and went down the path of growing the company and recruiting, the amount of support I received from the community was overwhelming,” Haberberger says. “The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce were cheerleaders for me. They saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.”

With the Hispanic Chamber’s encouragement, Haberberger was part of the initial cohort of St. Louis Business Diversity Connect’s “Pitch STL,” a program that helps entrepreneurs perfect their business pitches and develop sales acumen. Haberberger won the competition and used the seed money to invest in LUZCO. She also took advantage of the many pro-bono services, networking opportunities, and entrepreneurship support services available throughout St. Louis.

“Would LUZCO have happened anywhere else? I don’t think so,” Haberberger says. “I was lucky that I was in the right place at the right time, somewhere that everyone is truly and genuinely willing to help. Everyone is willing to introduce you to others or connect you with the right networks. I haven’t experienced that anywhere else I’ve lived. It’s very unique to St. Louis.”