Tag Archive for: Latin Heritage Month

Vanessa Rodriguez: Head of Community Lending & Investment, Commercial Real Estate, Wells Fargo

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Vanessa Rodriguez“At some stage, it’s not completely linear any longer. Sometimes, you must take a step back, or move laterally, to go forward,” says Vanessa Rodriguez. “You have to leave what you’ve exclusively done, branch out, take a risk or accept a new challenge. That could be a geographical change, a different line of business, a new company or position – but generally, it’s out of your comfort zone.”

Rodriguez shares on interviewing for a senior promotion while becoming a mother for the first time, learning to show up authentically regardless of who is in the room, and her commitment to coming at life and work from a genuine and constructive perspective.

On A Mission Towards Affordable Housing

After completing her B.S. in Business Administration from the UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business, Rodriguez was recruited to join the Wells Fargo Financial Analyst program in the Company’s Commercial Banking business. In 2007, she moved to NYC to take a position in Wells Fargo’s Real Estate Merchant Banking business, jumping into the hot seat just before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) hit in 2009.

“I had no clue as a young banker how bad it could or would get. I’d never seen a market cycle,” she says. “Being in commercial real estate, specifically in workouts, in NYC during the GFC was intense but an amazing and enriching experience. Three years felt like ten years and only elevated my interest in building my career in commercial real estate.” She began to rise in the ranks, leading teams in NYC and then back home again in the San Francisco Bay area. In the past couple years, she took the opportunity to further expand her real estate career by becoming the Group Head of Wells Fargo’s Community Lending and Investment (CLI) group.

“Affordable housing is one of the Bank’s top priorities, and this was an opportunity to lead a premier affordable housing team and large national business at Wells Fargo,” says Rodriguez. “It’s exciting to look at commercial real estate from a different angle and immerse myself in this new ecosystem – which includes non-profits, housing authorities, foundation work, government and community relations, public policy state and local governments.”

Rodriguez notes that providing a quality, affordable home to all must be a top priority everywhere in the US. In the San Francisco Bay Area, many of the families and friends she grew up with have had to relocate to attain good, cost-effective housing. Some now have 2-3 hour super commutes to work.

“It’s really sad when you become priced out of the place that you grew up, and that’s happening for more and more people across the country,” she says. “There are so many amazing things here in the Bay Area- the outdoors, the moderate climate, the diverse culture, so many top notch universities, the innovative tech industry, think tanks and VCs. But the downside is an extremely high cost of living in which regular people are forced out, breaking up families and communities, and negatively impacting the landscape. We need to work on these problems in communities across the country, and I want to be a part of that solution.”

Taking a New Role While Welcoming Her First Born

At a certain point as you ascend in leadership, Rodriguez notes that the path can become less clear. What your next step will be depends on investing in a lot of self-reflection and soul-searching around core questions: What do you want to do? How do you want to spend your time? Where can you add the most value? Because ultimately nobody else is going to be equipped to hand you those answers.

Such a moment came for Rodriguez when she was 41 years old and seven months pregnant with her first baby in 2021. The opportunity to run Wells Fargo’s CLI group came up, and she “looked away, frankly.”

“This is the value of having those strong personal and professional relationships in your life, whether they are formal or informal mentors or sponsors or ultimately over time perhaps become friends after years of working together” she says. “I had some of these people call me and say, ‘Don’t look away from this. It’s probably tough to think about a new opportunity now or interviewing for a new role at eight months pregnant, but do not check out right now.’”

So, despite how daunting it felt, Rodriguez began the interviewing process while pregnant in her third trimester, finished while on maternity leave, and ultimately returned to work in a new position. She had a second child in November 2022, and appreciates Wells Fargo for the support she’s received: assuming the role at this stage in her life has included managing her own high expectations around her career and motherhood, working hard to deliver, but speaking up where flexibility is needed. Rodriguez is inspired that while there are many things about parenthood that remain unique to women, parental matters are seen less and less as only women’s issues.

“But I will say that every day, I am forced to make decisions about where I am most needed because there are only so many hours in the day,” she admits. “I would love to get up every day and have my set routine, but my current state is more like a Rubik’s cube, where I move this piece down, pull it up here, take the lever off here, and make tough decisions about what I can and can’t do today. The truth is it’s not always graceful but tomorrow is always another chance to improve and do it better.”

Building Your Personal and Authentic Brand

“From the beginning of my career, I always focused on treating every single task like it was very important. It was all about building my personal brand,” she notes. “I tell young people: ‘You need to sweat the small things as well as the big things as you build your brand. Make your mark. What do you stand for? What are your standards on the quality of your work product and how do you approach it?’ Because if you build that personal brand and do great work for people, there is a multiplier effect where people start asking for you and saying your name in the room when you’re not there.”

Yet keeping your head down isn’t enough. Rodriguez also focused on real estate being a people business, and the importance of connecting, regardless of whether she may have initially felt like an outsider, to gain a strong network and the right visibility. Rising into that confidence to bring more of herself to the table has been immensely important to her growth.

“Twenty years ago, I entered the space focusing on being less visible. Over time, I realized there is a lot lost when you try to fit the mold, when you do not bring your full self to work, your best self to work” says Rodriguez. “We can and should bring our personal style and unique experience to work and connect in different ways. I certainly would encourage that in a sea of many, be memorable.”

Being extremely competent, authentic and walking the walk are important to Rodriguez’s sense of personal brand. As a leader, she never asks anyone to do something she hasn’t done or wouldn’t do herself. She prefers to roll up her sleeves. She values genuine and transparent communication and people feeling comfortable enough to share their unique perspectives.

“I want to bring value to people, whether it’s my clients, my team, or senior management, and what it means to bring value is going to be different for every situation,” she notes. “I hope that when I’m not in the room, people say she brings leadership value everyday, and she brings it in an authentic and genuine way – and we enjoy being in her orbit.”

Belonging, Irrespective of the Room

When it comes to entering a room where she may be the only woman, let alone the only Latina, Rodriguez says, “It starts with whether any of those factors intimidate you. I’ve always just prided myself on not being intimidated, even if there were moments I could have been.”

“When I enter the room, I focus on being prepared for the content of the meeting, on being a good listener, on finding solutions,” she says. “I focus on the principles that matter, irrespective of who’s in the room and whether you’re the only woman.”

While she’s had many moments of feeling she wasn’t part of the club and remembers once being told it was a career-limiting move not to golf, Rodriguez comes back to her confidence in the subject matter and being memorable because of her difference.

While twenty years ago, she may have gone with a strategy of blending in, today she would advise: “Embrace who you are and everybody else will be richer for it.”

Maintaining A Constructive Mindset

“There’s a moment, which is certainly an adjustment, when you’ve reached the point in your career where the buck stops with you in leadership. I’ve always been someone that took responsibility and was willing to make decisions, but when you get to the level where you have complete ownership from start to finish, it’s no longer someone else’s problem in leadership,” she says. “It’s ‘we’ and it’s ‘me.’ You’re not alone – you have peers, a whole team, a manager – but it’s embracing an entirely new level of ownership and responsibility.”

At that level, Rodriguez has embraced the advice to be vigilant with her mental approach, day-to-day and in all parts of life.

“How constructively you approach anything is going to be the difference-maker for you and for all those who work with you and for you,” she says, “When you hit those roadblocks and it’s tempting to pivot to feeling captive or negative, I force myself to remember that the only way out is forward. Approach issues constructively and that will help you rise above the challenge or circumstance, to focus on a solution.”

She continues, “I’ve needed that encouragement at times. We could waste time wallowing, but the work will be there tomorrow. So give yourself a few minutes, if you need to take a step away, do. But then, come back to it, calmly and constructively. That’s what I want to exemplify for my team, the leader I want to be. Cooler heads will always prevail.”

Keeping the Perspective of a Longer Arc

Twenty years into her work journey, Rodriguez would also advise that it’s okay to slow down and pace yourself: “If we’re lucky, the career is long. We live in a culture of instant gratification and are wired to constantly seek it. Technology only serves to reinforce and accelerate the need for instant gratification,” she notes. “But you truly have to toil away at something to really learn it, to master it, to become an expert, to unlock the benefits and skills that will propel you to that next level. The corporate ladder is really a staircase with various landings along the way and you have to play the long game. Climb the staircase…”

With two little ones at home, Rodriguez observes that “six months feels like a night” and time feels more precious than ever. Rodriguez loves spending time with her kids, husband and extended family. She’s seeking to weave back in her wellness focus and routine, and having enjoyed much travel before motherhood, muses on family travels to one day come.

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Claudia Vazquez: Founder, elevink

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Claudia Vazquez“What I saw as a disadvantage at the beginning, I turned it around to make my secret weapon, because I realized this is what makes me unique and able to see things from a different perspective,” says Claudia Vazquez. “I turned my disadvantage into my differentiator.”

As part of celebrating Hispanic Heritage, we open our Latina Leader series with inspired sharing from Claudia Vazquez: her vision for Hispanic inclusion and lifting others up with her!

A Vision For Service

If you only read her official business roles across the years, you’ll know at best half of what Vazquez has truly been up to in the workplace.

Originally from Mexico, Vazquez came to the U.S. in her twenties, teaching English as a second language and volunteering as a citizenship instructor. When she began her career 22 years ago in disability claims at Unum, she immediately saw how she could leverage her bicultural/ bilingual assets to better serve the company and the Hispanic community.

Rather than going with the status quo process of using a third party translator, she began to field all calls from Spanish-speaking clients around disability claims. She then led the implementation of the Hispanic Initiative to create end-to-end bilingual services, eliminating cost and time inefficiencies of outsourcing. Within seven years, she went from claims specialist to heading up the Short Term Disability and Administrative operations in her field office in California.

“I didn’t approach with a diversity mindset. I approached with a service perspective,” reflects Vazquez. “I realized we could improve the service, have more loyal and satisfied customers, and use it as a selling point with clients. It also gave Spanish-speaking employees an opportunity to go above and beyond, support their community and receive recognition for speaking another language.”

When she moved to her next role at Cigna, she replicated this thinking and was asked to find more people with an intrapreneurial mindset like hers. She began to support the recruiting team in Hispanic outreach, emphasizing the importance of representation: “Nobody grows up thinking I want to work at an insurance company,” she argued. “So if we don’t personally represent what we’re trying to attract them to do, this is not a natural fit.”

Moving to the East Cost for a role in Prudential’s head offices, Vazquez enrolled into the Hispanic BRG on her second day. Within six months, she was co-leading the BRG and soon increased membership from 400 to 1000 – while creating best practices, relationship with hiring teams, and outreach to external partners.

“As my passion for supporting the Hispanic community at work evolved, I realized we have to start grassroots and then let things organically develop, so that a ripple effect is created,” says Vazquez. She began to focus on seeding the momentum that allowed partnerships to prove their value as they grew. With this approach, the Red Shoe movement proved so successful that it caught leadership attention and she traveled to Mexico and Brazil to highlight and expand the partnership.

An Advocate for Hispanic Inclusion

As a Hispanic Initiative officer, Vazquez saw the impact of bringing in change-agent partners. She began to shift to building those external relationships such as with We Are All Human and became a Hispanic Star Ambassador. As such, Vazquez has attended the United Nations as part of the delegation to roll out the Hispanic Star unifying symbol and platform to advance Hispanics in the US.

Despite a strong track record of following her mission towards inclusion, only in March did Vazquez formally move from senior business roles to take on a VP of Diversity and Inclusion role. In the role, she developed a strategic roadmap for inclusion on hiring, retaining, developing and celebrating Hispanic talent, laying out both fundamentals and execution strategies.

“I have a passion towards supporting the Hispanic community, but I also see it as a business imperative in the US. Anyone that’s not attuning to Hispanics is going to lose market share,” says Vazquez, pointing out Hispanics make up one of every five people and growing.

Vazquez also iterates that attracting early loyalty among the Hispanic community is critical, because word of mouth and following the family or neighbor recommendations are huge influences on decision-making.

Lifting Others Up With Her

As a Hispanic BRG leader, Vazquez also leveraged the opportunity to mentor and sponsor others in the workplace. She brought more visibility to group members by creating project management opportunities – with clear job descriptions and weekly time investment required – and then by updating their managers about the impacts they were delivering.

“This gave their managers an opportunity to see their employees from a completely different angle of perspective that they had not necessarily experienced directly with them,” says Vazquez. “I wanted to make sure people saw they had everything it took. They just sometimes needed to be able to sell or position themselves differently.”

Vazquez emphasizes staying connected to your own essence and North Star. “I’ve promised myself that regardless of how fast or how far I’m going, I’m still going to be me and not forget where I came from. And I’m not going to forget that there are many individuals still looking to find their path.”

This is what drives Vazquez in her personal mission that co-exists with the day job. It’s why she shares her story to inspire students through HISPA. It’s why she’s available if someone reaches to her on Linked In. It’s why she founded elevink to mentor younger generations on mindfulness, creating a personal brand, and challenging them to envision their future so they begin to steer their choices and energies in that direction.

Owning Her Voice

“Sometimes we question ourselves and protect ourselves because we’ve been through so much. In my case, I’ve been working since I was 14 in Mexico to help my mom, I paid for my education, I left my family to come to the US with English as my second language, I began working with an associates degree and studied full-time while working, so there are sacrifices,” says Vazquez. “But if I had the confidence in my 20s I have now, I don’t know how much larger the impact could be.”

She continues, “We need to trust our gut. We know exactly where we see ourselves, but sometimes we’re afraid to share that vision,” she says. “We just need to move confidently in the pursuit of our dreams. From every setback, we can learn.”

Often the only Hispanic at the table, Vazquez never gives up the vision. Instead, she allows time to pass and looks for new opportunities and angles to pursue: “After many years of navigating Fortune 500 companies, I have learned how I need to approach certain things, and I also understand that change is difficult. Companies will be ready at a certain time, and when they are, things will happen.”

Reflecting on her own journey: “After 25 years of revalidating, I have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. I’ve become more of an unapologetic Latina who stays optimistic about our future possibilities, but it took me 22 years of going through this journey to realize that it’s my life, it’s my vision, it’s my calling.”

Vazquez has learned to take herself a little less seriously. She recently returned from a self-care trip to California with her mother and sister, leaving her husband and three children back at home. She recommends taking the time to celebrate your achievements.

As for her vision: “I’m still getting closer to where I ultimately see myself: as a CEO of a nonprofit organization that caters to Hispanics. That’s what I’m aiming and preparing myself for in the long run. My goal is to leave a mark in the evolution of Hispanics in the US.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Embracing Culturally Relevant Latina Leadership

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Latina LeadersTheglasshammer is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month 2021 with profiles of Latina leaders and feature themes.

When we look at the numbers among corporate leadership for Latinx executives, little has quantitatively shifted, but what is finally evolving is the talk around the journey: towards valuing culturally integrative leadership.

Latina Style called out the Top 10 Corporate Latina Executives of 2020, included Agnes Suarez, President & CEO of AIG; Leticia M. Sanchez, Executive Director and Market Director of Banking at JP Morgan Chase & Co. Customer Bank; Luz Esparza, Managing Director, Los Angeles of Accenture; Patty Arvielo, Co-Founder and President of New American Funding, and Patty Juarez, National Diverse Segments Director, Commercial Banking Group, Wells Fargo & Company.

But among 16 current Hispanic CEOS of the top S&P 500 companies, women hold none of those positions. Between 2000 and 2020, Latinx have made up only 36 of new Fortune 500 CEO appointments, and there’s been 41 Latinx CEOS, with only two being women.

While calling out Latinx tech leaders, Latin America Reports points out that Latin America itself has been now birthed 17 unicorns, 14 of which have developed in the last three years, and mostly in finance, insurance, and real estate.

Nit Reeder of Ernst & Young notes that Latinx entrepreneurs are leading the start-up scene, with over 40% of Latinx entrepreneurs being millennial and Latinas starting up businesses at five times the rate of their male counterparts. But the same time, even as far back as November, Covid-19 was closing a third of Latinx-owned businesses.

And in a broader glance of the Latinx working population, a recent Aspen Institute report emphasizes integration of the Latinx workforce into the digital economy—as the group highest at risk of digital displacement from automation.

Gaps in Both Perception and Opportunities

The IBM Institute for Business Value published a survey report called Untapped Potential: The Hispanic Talent Advantage, based on 1000 Hispanic leaders offering their perceptions on the opportunities and lack thereof in the corporate workplace during a 33 hour virtual jam session.

When it comes to perception of the Hispanic community, only 16% of participants felt the community is unified and nearly nobody (2.5%) felt the perceptions of the Hispanic community reflect the reality.

They found 41% of Hispanic executives say they benefited from formal mentoring or training but only a quarter of junior managers felt they had access to mentoring programs and only 31% had access to workplace training.

Only 1 in 5 felt empowered to overcome the professional challenges they faced.

The experience of prejudice or feeling they needed to work harder was very prominent. 87% of all participants had experienced racial prejudice, and 63% had experienced prejudice due to accent, language or speech pattern. 63% of the participants felt they had to work harder because of their Hispanic identity and 82% of Latinas felt they did not get the respect they deserve. Latina women were also more likely to cite discrimination based on gender (78%) than white women (67%).

Among the senior leaders, they were most likely to give value to strong communication skills, personal organizational skills, and business savvy in terms of capabilities that supported their success. “Success” was most likely to be defined as both “achieving financial security” and “creating positive change”.

The report notes that a key gap was between the value that mentorship had played in supporting the more senior Hispanic leaders and the lack of mentorship reported available in the perception of the junior managers aspiring to leadership, urging companies to create a hiring advantage by cultivating more mentorship and sponsorship opportunities for young Latinx talent.

Latina women with sponsorship earn 6.1% more than those who lack sponsors, and early on, it can contribute to more stretch assignments and promotions.

Culturally Relevant Leadership Development

Whereas misperception of identity and feeling penalized for it are brutal headwinds to face in the corporate environment, there is increasing encouragement for Latinas to focus on turning this to your advantage.

Recent qualitative dissertation research entitled Recognizing La Cultura: The Experience of Cultural Scripts in Latina Leadership out of the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota found that in different ways, cultural identity and firsthand experiences can be catalytic in informing leadership approaches and trajectories.

Cultural scripts included:

  • familismo: the importance of close, protective, and extended family relationships
  • marianismo: gender roles according to which women are expected to be selfless, self-sacrificing, and nurturing
  • personalismo: creating personal and meaningful relationships
  • colectivismo: the importance of belonging to a group and recognizing the needs of that group
  • respeto: high regard granted to persons because of their formal authority, age, or social power
  • simpatía: promoting pleasant interactions and positive relationships, while avoiding conflict and disharmony

Based on her findings, Patricia E. Conde-Brooks, the dissertation author, emphasizes that “culturally relevant leadership development needs to be encouraged in the Latino community,” meaning the integration of cultural assets as fuel in the leadership journey.

She found that Latina leaders sustain a strong cultural heritage, and that leveraging the positive aspects of these cultural scripts not only fosters pride and empowers Latina women, but can be leveraged as important leadership assets in your toolbox.

At the same time, overcoming the inhibiting influence of marianismo is part of the journey for some Latina women. And while self-promotion is often felt to go against the cultural grain, a survey into women’s fear of self-promotion found that “African American (44%) and Hispanic (47%) women are far less likely to downplay their strengths and abilities than white (60%) women”: influenced by their generally younger age profile.

One organization tapping into social and navigational cultural wealth to accelerate Latina women to the C-Suite is LatinaVIDA, whose mission “is to empower and equip Latina professionals to overcome systemic workplace barriers through culturally relevant leadership programs.”

Drawing from the key traits that define many successful Latina leaders, the organization focuses on fostering Visibility (getting noticed for your talent and leadership), Identity (strong comfort with personal and cultural identities), Determination (holding your personal vision despite challenges and barriers) and Action (a willingness to step up and take responsibility of all facets of your life).

LatinaVIDA offers a number of programs and events, including culturally relevant peer-to peer empowerment, mentorship, collaboration and leadership development.

By: Aimee Hansen

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Unlocking the Power of Latino Employees in the Workplace

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Latina

Guest Contributed By Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link , CTI

Latinx Heritage Month is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary – and ever-growing – economic influence of the Latinx community in the United States.

The buying power of the Latinx market is currently $1 trillion and projected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2020; if this community with its collective capital were a country, it would rank as the twelfth largest economy in the world. What’s more, Latinx labor will account for 80 percent of U.S. workforce growth between 2012 and 2022. Understandably, multinational companies based in the United States are desperate to unlock this growth market.

Take Toyota’s campaign for its 2017 Camry: the company created an ad specifically targeted to its Spanish-speaking consumers. The ad shows a man whizzing down a highway in a Camry, when he gets a call from his mother. He hesitates for a few seconds before he decides to decline the call and focus on the joy of driving his new car. Toyota collaborated with Conill, a Hispanic-focused agency, to create an ad that spoke to many Latinx consumers who cherish family values, but struggle with the desire to break away and live on the “edge.” Toyota’s ad was hugely successful because the company engaged an agency that understood the market in an authentic way.

We’ve seen other employers and entrepreneurs use their unique insights to create a differentiated voice in the mainstream. Take Christy Haubegger, founder and publisher of Latina magazine—the first publication of its kind to cater to the Latina population in the U.S. She created the publication to change the complexion of newsstands: “I was a huge magazine reader growing up, and you’d never see Latina faces on a newsstand. It was a striking thing. So, I was a consumer, I was the target audience, I was that person who wanted to see that reality reflected back.”

To unlock this powerhouse market, both Toyota and Latina magazine capitalized on insights from those who represent it. As previous Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) research shows, teams with at least one member who represents the culture of the team’s target end user are up to 158 percent more likely to understand that end user, increasing the likelihood of successful innovation for that audience.

Unfortunately, Toyota and Haubegger still remain outliers. The Center for Talent Innovation’s report, “Latinos at Work,” reveals that Latinx employees are caught in an unfortunate bind: they feel that in order to advance in the workplace, they need to tamp down their innovation-unleashing cultural savvy. A full 43 percent of Latinas and 33 percent of Latino men feel the need to compromise their authenticity to conform to executive or leadership presence standards at their companies. Overall, more than three in four (76 percent) expend energy repressing parts of their personas. To be seen as leadership material, that is, Latinx employees feel the need to cover or downplay who they are by modifying their appearance, body language, communication style, and leadership behaviors. Promotion patterns positively reinforce this belief, as those who spend a great deal of energy repressing their personas at work are almost three times as likely as those who expend less energy to strongly agree that they are being promoted quickly.

And the frustrations of Latinx employees in the white-collar workforce don’t end there. More than half of Latinx professionals (59 percent) experience slights and snubs in the workplace. Of that 59 percent, 24 percent say that others are given (or have taken) credit for their contributions, 22 percent say that colleagues tell them jokes that make fun of certain ethnic or religious backgrounds, and 18 percent say they are excluded from after-work “get-togethers.” They also lack sponsors – senior leaders who advocate for their promotion, arrange for stretch assignments, and provide “air cover” to take risks. A mere five percent of full-time, high-earning Latinx professionals in large companies have sponsors in their corners.

Here’s the good news: there are clear cut steps any organization can take to better leverage Latinx talent. To include, empower, and advance this crucial talent cohort, and as a result, tap into a not-to-be-missed market, employers can do the following:

Encourage sponsorship across difference.

The boost sponsorship confers on Latinx talent is massive. Latinx employees with sponsors are 42 percent more likely than Latinx employees without sponsors to report being satisfied with their rate of career progression. We have found in past research that sponsored professionals in general are also less likely to have one foot out of the door, and more likely to ask for stretch assignments and raises. This robust relationship can help Latinx talent achieve their full potential, and it can drive engagement and retention while fostering workplaces of inclusion, authenticity, and innovation.

Expand the idea of executive presence.

According to 53 percent of Latinas and 44 percent of Latino men, executive or leadership presence at their companies is defined as conforming to traditionally white male standards. Organizations can make this population feel valued and included by prizing authenticity over conformity and operating from an understanding that a range of presentation and communication styles can succeed in the boardroom.

Embrace and celebrate difference.

Every year, Coca-Cola celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by recognizing the achievements and contributions of Latinos in the United States. In 2015, Coca-Cola launched the campaign #OrgullosoDeSer with a short film to celebrate the power of family and culture. Using the hashtag #OrgullosoDeSer #[InsertLastName], people shared the film along with special family moments and their own reasons for being proud to be Latino. “At Coca-Cola we have been a part of so many of the important moments in Hispanic families’ lives, and we want to continue making new memories with them,” said Lauventria Robinson, vice president, Multicultural Center of Excellence, Coca-Cola North America. “During Hispanic Heritage Month, we are celebrating the immense pride Latinos have for their culture and heritage, a pride that translates most significantly into their family names, which they carry with honor and joy.”

Latinx voices need to be heard and understood. Representation matters. Companies have an opportunity to tap into the unique insights of their Latinx talent and, as a result, tap into the huge and extraordinary Latinx market that awaits. There’s no better way to celebrate Latinx Heritage Month.

About the author

Julia Taylor Kennedy, Executive Vice President and Director of Publications

Julia Taylor Kennedy is executive vice president and director of publications at the Center for Talent Innovation where she leads digital learning and drives qualitative research and writing. She coauthored Mission Critical: Unlocking the Value of Veterans in the Workforce, Power of the Purse: Engaging Women Decision Makers for Healthy Outcomes, and Disabilities and Inclusion. A seasoned writer, producer, and interviewer, Taylor Kennedy has moderated sessions and hosted podcasts at the UN, Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, The Conference Board, and many others. She has also collaborated with business and gender experts on articles published in Forbes, Time, and academic journals, and has advised speakers for major platforms like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. Previously, Taylor Kennedy hosted 51%, a public radio show on gender issues, and reported for NPR and NPR member stations. She earned a journalism degree from Northwestern University and a master of international relations from Yale University.

Pooja Jain-Link, Senior Vice President and Associate Director of Research

Pooja Jain-Link is a senior vice president and associate director of research at the Center for Talent Innovation. She drives research design and analysis, focusing on survey development and quantitative data. She has expertise in the use of business as a force for social change. Prior to joining CTI, she verified the social and environmental standards of Certified B Corporations™, worked on corporate sustainability at Bigelow Tea, and was an assistant editor of academic journals at Cambridge University Press. Jain-Link received her BA from Duke University and earned an MBA and Master of Environmental Management from Yale University.

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