Myriad Genetics produces some of the most innovative genetic tests in the industry. As CEO, Paul J. Diaz sets the company’s sights on making the tests inclusive and accessible to all. P58
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For too long, the conversation has been about the lack of Latinos in the boardroom. This issue focuses on the leaders who are proving the statistics wrong and securing some of their first board seats.
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Conversations at the Top: Paul J. Diaz
Paul J. Diaz envisions a future of inclusivity, accessibility, and patient-focused care at Myriad Genetics
Paul Francisco leverages his experience in the NFL to implement new policies at State Street and build a winning team of his own
THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING
Naysa Aparicio-Hernandez achieved a leadership role at RJW Logistics Group thanks to her positive attitude. She now uses that power to help young Latinas.
CHRO Kristina Guillen on why inclusion matters and how her people-first HR strategy will take Anderson Holdings to the next level
As vice president of global alliances and partnerships at Rackspace Technology, Adrianna Bustamante focuses on pushing her team to the next level
How lessons from a family-owned Mexican restaurant are helping Miguel Hernandez find success as general counsel at Henry Company
After climbing the corporate ladder, Ilhiana Rojas Saldana took the leap to found her company, BeLIVE, where she uses her expertise to empower and uplift the Latino community
Ricardo Alarcon's global expertise is helping Ecolab prepare for another one hundred years of driving innovative hygiene, water, and infection solutions
HOW CAN LATINOS SECURE MORE seats on corporate boards?
That is the question at the heart of the New Faces in the Boardroom issue. As the name suggests, we’ve made great strides in the past two years: there are indeed new faces in the boardroom. Leaders with impeccable qualifications and familiar life stories. Leaders that represent the best in our community.
This major step—propelled by decades of work by many individuals and organizations—signifies the beginning of what could be a steady march towards proportionate board representation. Our focus at Hispanic Executive is to continue to do our part, not just by highlighting new board trailblazers but also by drawing attention to the narrative surrounding board membership.
Pedro A. Guerrero CEO of Guerrero Media Publisher of Hispanic ExecutiveIt is critical that we shift the dialogue from a “lack-of” conversation to a “here we are, and more is to come” discussion. The story that we tell ourselves about our progress—even if it’s incremental—matters. It broadens our awareness and perspective and motivates us to stand ready for when we are presented with board opportunities.
Which leads me to a toolbox of strategies to increase Latino board representation.
The first is one all Latino professionals should implement: lifting each other up and making inclusivity the default mode. Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri (p.126) regularly demonstrates the efficacy of this strategy. Not one opportunity comes along where she doesn’t first consider a way to help our community advance. She keeps a personal list of highly qualified Latinos that she can quickly reference when she’s presented with new board positions. She understands her influence and responsibility and does not shy away from it.
The second strategy focuses on preparation and differentiation, emphasizing how potential board candidates need to expand their prospects. Alessandra Yockelson (p.122) and Sandra Campos (p.118) both offer practical advice to potential board leaders, explaining how they can prepare for board positions and how to arrive at a better understanding of what sets them apart. For both Yockelson and Campos, the effort to prepare is selfdriven. It requires candidates to exert themselves professionally, to venture beyond their comfort zones, to diversify their networks so that their connections go beyond the Hispanic community, and to push back on the narrative that Latinos aren’t visible. Always show up, and always be ready and prepared.
Of course, while the first two strategies are within our control, many aspects of the board nomination and confirmation
process are not up to us—which is where the third strategy comes into play. As Anilu wisely advises in her interview for The New Majority podcast, we must continue to be “strategic and patient.”
Sometimes qualified Latinos are prevented from serving on boards by their own companies’ arcane policies regarding board leadership. Other times, it’s an issue on the part of the boards themselves. Luckily, companies are starting to rethink their approaches to board leadership— undertaking search processes focused on diverse candidates and implementing best practices that help remove biases. But it’s still often up to governance committees, who are over-reliant on legacy networks and partners, to find candidates to nominate.
Therein lies the crux of the matter. If trusted professional networks lack Latinos leaders, or if companies are too reliant on search processes entrusted to legacy networks or firms, the effort to nominate
a Latino will be met by a strong headwind. There must be a demand for corporate board members and governance committees to rethink their search processes, revisit their policies, and most importantly, look deeply at their networks.
Personally, I have always found it difficult to be patient or strategic if I don’t believe in my ability to achieve my end goal, or if my own actions don’t match my dreams. For me, it can be a challenge to accept the notion that “there is no better time to be a Latino” when it comes to Latino representation in the boardroom if Latinos themselves are not doing anything to drive that reality.
If we are indeed here, and if there are indeed more of us to come, then everyone reading this letter would do well to follow the example of the executives in our feature section. They make it their day’s work— their life’s work—to uplift others and prepare for the future.
“It is critical that we shift the dialogue from a ‘lack-of’ conversation to a ‘here we are, and more is to come’ discussion. The story that we tell ourselves about our progress—even if it’s incremental—matters.”
Edra Soto is an interdisciplinary artist and codirector of the outdoor project space the Franklin. Her work has been presented at the Smart Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Chicago Cultural Center, Albright-Knox Northland, and more.
Donna De La Cruz is a former Associated Press reporter and a current freelance writer focusing on health and wellness issues. Her articles have been published in the New York Times and Washington Post.
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Part Four”
“We may be overwhelmed by the convergence of multiple crises, or unsure of exactly what to do, and that’s OK. What it means, though, is that you have to ask a lot of hard questions and not pretend to have the answers.”
—Javier Saade, Publisher’s Circle Contributor, “The Time Is Now. The Year Is 2020.”
DANIEL LIND-RAMOS SPECIALIZES IN transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. In his hands, and through his paintings and sculpture, everyday objects become points of fascination and poignancy.
Lind-Ramos has been rightfully celebrated throughout his career, earning major distinctions (including a MacArthur fellowship) both in his native Puerto Rico and in the United States. I sat down with him to reflect on his journey thus far, the meaning that his work holds for Black Puerto Ricans, and more.
I believe I met you back in 1994, when we were both invited to participate in the Segunda Bienal de Pintura del Caribe y Centroamérica in the Dominican Republic. I remember your paintings—they were very beautifully crafted, stylish, and masterfully made. What role does painting play in your work nowadays?
In painting, I was looking for the “personal sign”: a signal that could be recognized as the main characteristic of my formal vocabulary. I was trying to create a particular luminosity, not necessarily from the claroscuro approach but from the simultaneous contrast effect of color and the way that light reflects when it hits different levels of pigment application.
I was also in search of the conquest of “psychological space” (the superposition of a primary or secondary color over a background of tertiary or chromatic or achromatic grays
that produces the sensation of a figure against a background). In this figurative painting program, every square inch of the canvas was thought of in terms of nuances of complementary colors applied either simultaneously or tonally contrasted. It was as if I wanted to “weave” the construction of the painted image with well-thought-out refinement of color where there was no place for randomness. Nowadays in my assemblages, when I play with the objects, this approach to color is strongly taken under consideration.
In a recent press release, you mentioned that your goal with your practice is to “Transfor[m] everyday objects into assemblages that speak to the global connections inherent in Afro-Caribbean and diaspora legacies.” Can you tell us about your relationship to found objects? How do you source them? Does the way they are sourced influence the direction or the meaning of the artwork they end up being a part of?
Normally, a found or given object activates my memory and imagination in different ways; the person that gives it to me or the context where I find it provokes different stimuli. The development of ideas—and consequently the creation of the image related to the form, utility, story, or materiality—connects me with experiences and memories linked to the piece. After this, other pieces that are bought, exchanged, or created by me are incorporated through a process in which I see myself as free to incorporate other medium materials or techniques.
Here is an example: my neighbor Enma, a great and venerable cook from my community, was ninety-two years old when she came to my studio with a big old cooking grater in her hands. “Junior,” she said, “I know you will do something with it.” I knew from her that the grater used to belong to her grandmother. In that precious moment, I felt
that she was an old emissary, passing to me through the symbolism of her action the ancestral knowledge related to nourishment based on the coconut and the yucca, two of the principal ingredients in our traditional food and two ingredients that were, on many occasions during hazardous times, our source of nourishment.
We should never forget that nowadays, famine still affects many countries. With this in mind, I added and constructed other objects and brought different materials related to the narrative of sustenance of the collectivity to create Figura Emisaria (2020), where the grater given to me by Enma is part of the focal point of the composition.
(a) Centinelas (Sentinels), 2013, 114" x 120" x 48".
(b) Vencedor 1797 (Victorius 1797), 2018-2019, 67" x 70" x 33".
(c) Figura Emisaria, 2020, Marlborough Gallery, 108" × 60" × 47".
During one of my latest trips to Puerto Rico, I noticed that in mainstream local television, the inclusion of Black-skinned individuals is often highlighted as a novelty. How does your practice push boundaries for other Black Puerto Ricans? I think that my practice might push boundaries for other Black Puerto Ricans because, at least with my formal system and narrative, I could be proposing the possibility of bringing about a space of expression that is not necessarily the canon of cultural officiality. We should be considering the experience of Négritude in order to provoke a wider, richer, and multidimensional manifestation of Blackness in any other discipline.
Can you tell us a bit about your experiences with artistic learning— both your studies as a young artist and your experience as an educator in Puerto Rico?
In my childhood, my house was like a collective workshop where my mother made crafts with natural fiber, my grandmother was a seamstress, one of my uncles was a cabinet maker, and my other uncle was a coconut mask maker. At one time, I could see all of them working in different places of the house, including the yard. Meanwhile, they allowed me to draw on the cardboard walls of the home. My first encounter with pigments and brushes was in my residence, with the ones that my Uncle Luis used to paint his coconuts.
During the 1970s, at the University of Puerto Rico, Professor Felix Bonilla Norat introduced us to color theory, including through a course related to “the twenty pictorial situations” in which we were introduced to an experiment with the found object and arte povera. In the 1980s, at New York University, Professor Idelle Weber (a pop and photorealist painter) was always encouraging my inventiveness.
As an art educator in Puerto Rico, my intention was to expose students to art fundamentals and the history of art and to create situations where the students could look into themselves.
Then, they were encouraged to use this experience to create visual symbols regardless of the intellectual, emotional, or retinal approach of the chosen vision for expression.
What do you see as your biggest calling as an artist at this historic moment?
[Telling] our particular stories through a system of expression based on the materials, techniques, and practices that are connected to those stories is an important way to celebrate diversity as a beautiful and necessary component of our human experience.
Puerto Rican born, Edra Soto is an interdisciplinary artist and codirector of the outdoor project space the Franklin.
Recent venues presenting Soto’s work include Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s satellite, the Momentary (Arkansas); Albright-Knox Northland (New York); Chicago Cultural Center (Illinois); Smart Museum (Illinois); and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Illinois).
Recently, Soto completed the public art commission titled Screenhouse, which is currently at Millennium Park in Chicago. Soto has attended residency programs at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Beta-
Local, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Project Row Houses, and Art Omi, among others. Soto was awarded the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, the inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, among others. Between 2019 and 2020, Soto exhibited and traveled to Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Cuba as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund.
Soto holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree from Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico.
When one’s work makes an impact in the community, it transcends employment and becomes a calling. These executives have answered their call.
14. Dina Marie Hernandez, ELM Home & Building Solutions 19. Paola Garcia, OneMain Financial 22. Javier C. Rivera, Southern California Edison 26. Joy Lopez, Dimensional Fund Advisors 29. Moe Vela, Unicorn Hunters 32. Tanya Reu-Narvaez, Realogy 34. Patrick Apodaca, PNM Resources 39. Myriam Vidalon, NielsenIQ 42. Paul Francisco, State Street Corporation 45. Patricia Correa, Eaton 48. Gonzalo Palacio, Oportun Credit Card 51. Sara Gonzales-Erhan, Nutanix 54. Griselda Aldrete, Alliant Energy Corp.As CHRO of ELM Home & Building Solutions, Dina Marie Hernandez works to break down barriers to entry for workers in need of a second chance
“And when I took this role, I really saw that it would be coming home for me.”
Hernandez’s familiarity with ELM’s target hiring market is grounded in her experience growing up in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. Early on, she cultivated a disciplined work ethic through her work at her father’s electronic and car audio store. She started out taking inventory, but by the time she headed off to college, she was assisting her father with operations and sales.
After graduating with a degree in legal research from Saint Francis College, Hernandez went on to STC Associates, a marketing and advertising boutique. Hernandez began as a receptionist but quickly demonstrated a talent for business management—a talent that didn’t go unnoticed by a woman named Sophie Ann Terrisse, who went on to become one of the most important mentors of Hernandez’s career.
“She told me to get out of the receptionist desk and come back to the executive office and think about all these pieces we needed to run a successful company,” Hernandez recalls. “That was really the start of our journey, and it showed me how empowering it is
“I don’t think I was hired for ELM because I had this magnificent international experience. I think I was hired because I was a person that understood our target intimately,” says Dina Marie Hernandez, chief human resources officer at ELM Home & Building Solutions.
when someone trusts you. I learned about what it really takes to build a business from the ground up, and what it takes to expand that business internationally.”
In 2008, Hernandez was headhunted by Alvarez & Marsal, where she spent seven years working her way up from international human resource manager to global director of human resources.
“We went straight into hyper-growth mode,” Hernandez says of her early days at Alvarez & Marsal. “I had this amazing background working with my dad, working with Sophie, and expanding her business internationally, and I took it all together and I plugged in what I had learned. We reorganized the HR department to support that hyper-growth over the first five years, and went from a 750 to 3,500 person workforce in over 19 countries. It was a tremendous experience.”
Hernandez then brought her expertise to Berkshire Hathaway in a business unit called EXSIF Worldwide: in that role, she explains, she helped the business go from “crisis mode” to adapting to the new environment and developing innovative responses to fluctuations within the industry. From there, Hernandez moved to ELM Home & Building Solutions, which prides itself on providing high-performing, customized solutions to contractors, consumers, fabricators, and distributors.
When Hernandez joined ELM as CHRO, she approached the role strategically: first and foremost, she wanted to get to know the company and understand the ins and outs of the business. Only then would she make any changes.
“I made it my business to understand the heart and the soul of the company and how it operated through multiple perspectives,” Hernandez elaborates. “No one should be allowed to make any recommendations until they’ve spent a very intimate time with the company, and you can only do that by getting your boots on the ground.” For Hernandez, gaining a “boots on the ground” understanding of ELM meant donning the uniform of the workers in the outdoor home remodeling business segment and going on-site with them to see their day-to-day process.
“All the employees at ELM rise and set with the sun,” Hernandez says. “They start before the sun’s up in manufacturing, and they are out in the field doing sales and home improvement. Our production employees wake up at some unforgiving hour and go to bed at ten o’clock at night because they’re coming from a customer’s house, which is sometimes two hours away from our branch location, and then get up and do it again the next day.”
Audax Group is a leading alternative investment manager with offices in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Since its founding in 1999, the firm has raised over $27 billion in capital across its Private Equity and Private Debt businesses. Audax Private Equity has invested over $5 billion in more than 140 platforms and over 1,000 add-on companies, and is currently investing out of its $3.5 billion, sixth private equity fund.
Through its disciplined Buy & Build approach, Audax seeks to help platform companies execute add-on acquisitions that fuel revenue growth, optimize operations, and significantly increase equity value. With more than 300 employees and over 100 investment professionals, the firm is a leading capital partner for North American middle market companies.
Audax is committed to cultivating and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion across our firm and the businesses with which we partner. We are thrilled to collaborate with great leaders like Dina Hernandez and the team at ELM who share our common values and persistent focus on DEI. AudaxGroup.com
In addition to connecting and building relationships with current employees, Hernandez has worked to build ELM’s talent base. All of those talent acquisition efforts are guided by one mantra: “We want to give everyone a chance, including people who are traditionally overlooked.”
As Hernandez explains, she and her team are going after a segment of the workforce market that most companies stay away from—individuals who need a second chance. Candidates for a position at ELM could be someone fresh on the road to recovery, someone who has a disability that makes it challenging for them to work, or anyone else who is ready to join or rejoin the workforce after struggling with some sort of impediment to working.
Hernandez was already familiar with some of the challenges facing such individuals, thanks to her childhood experiences in Brooklyn and her experiences working at her father’s store. She and her team make it their business to ensure that ELM has support systems in place that ensure these candidates’ success.
The CHRO and her team are also working to break down common barriers to entry in the workforce. In large part, Hernandez says, this means working to truly incorporate diversity and inclusion into their HR work. For that reason, ELM does not require candidates to submit résumés.
“If you want to drive D&I, you can’t stop at training— you have to change the way you operate and put it into action. If you want to give people a chance, why collect a résumé that gets in the way?” Hernandez remarks. “We are looking for people that don’t even know where to look for us, and that means we have to cater to their needs to hire them.”
The results speak for themselves—in eighteen months, ELM has grown from six hundred employees to nearly four thousand.
Gallagher values our partnership with Dina Hernandez and the ELM family of companies. We are grateful for the opportunity to support ELM’s business growth and deep-rooted commitment to their people, customers, employees, and communities—creating an environment where people can achieve their potential in both their careers and their lives.
“That was really the start of our journey, and it showed me how empowering it is when someone trusts you.”
Gallagher congratulates our friend and client
HERNANDEZ
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Hispanic ExecutiveBY LUCY CAVANAGH
“I’VE REALIZED THAT I DON’T HAVE TO be tied to only government—or nonprofits, for that matter. A big impact can be made from the private sector seat,” says Paola Garcia, vice president and head of corporate social responsibility at OneMain Financial.
Garcia’s passion for financial education and empowerment started at a very early age. While she was a high school student in Vallejo, California (located just outside of San Francisco), her school district filed for bankruptcy, which caused all extracurriculars as well as some crucial resources to be cut from the budget. But Garcia defied the limitations that were set by her guidance counselors and other administrators about what a young Latina woman could be, earning scholarships to her dream college: the University of California, Berkeley.
“My mission in life is to extend a hand to the next generation,” Garcia states. “After Berkeley, I wanted to solve the world’s problems in what I thought was the best way to do it, by working in the government.”
Paola Garcia’s passion for expanding people’s financial well-being began in government and now continues at OneMain Financial
She moved to Washington, DC, where she started her career in the United States Department of the Treasury. Her talent, work ethic, and scrappiness quickly got the attention of her superiors and earned her a spot on the White House finance team managing its multimillion-dollar budget under President Obama.
Soon thereafter, Garcia went back to school to get dual master’s degrees—an MBA and MS in education policy. Then she joined Goldman Sachs, where she learned about the power of corporate social responsibility. Soon, the idea that she could make a difference in the private sector began to sink in.
Garcia had first seen the power that private companies had to make a social impact through the scholarships that she had received from businesses like McDonald’s and Genentech, which made college a reality for her. “When you’re a young student trying to build your little savings fund for college, scholarship money goes such a long way,” Garcia reflects.
After gaining more financial expertise at Goldman, Garcia decided to use her know-how to help promote financial wellness even more directly and joined Aura Financial, a fintech start-up company that predominantly served the Latino community. Aura shut down during the pandemic, but shortly after, Garcia joined the company that would expand her reach and allow her to have an impact with hard-working Americans across the country: OneMain Financial.
Garcia was drawn to OneMain’s commitment to financial wellness and the access to capital that it was able to provide for underserved communities. OneMain helps customers meet critical financial needs, including debt consolidation, home and auto repair, medical procedures, and other major expenses with fixed-rate installment loans.
“When we give a loan, we actually sit down with the customer and they go through an ‘ability to pay’ analysis,” Garcia explains. “We look at how much income they have coming in [and] their expenses so that we don’t set up our customers to fail, and we aim to ensure that they get a loan that they can actually pay back.”
In 2021, OneMain issued a $750 million social bond that advances the company’s commitment to financial inclusion. The net proceeds of the bond are committed to serving
credit-disadvantaged communities around the country, with at least 75 percent of the loans allocated to women or minority borrowers.
Another initiative to promote financial education and empowerment that Garcia is passionate about is Credit Worthy by OneMain Financial, the company’s financial education offering for high schoolers. The curriculum teaches high schoolers basic financial capability skills, including how to use and manage credit, the importance of building credit, the types of credit and their sources, and how to avoid and correct debt problems. The program was piloted in five major metro areas in 2021, and in February 2022, OneMain announced a $4 million commitment to expand the program nationwide to reach at least 1,500 schools by the end of the year.
The curriculum equips young people with the financial know-how to set them up for success in the future. “I’m really excited about this project because the goal of the program is to bring financial capability to high school students,” Garcia says. “It’s an extension of our company mission, which is to improve the financial well-being of hardworking Americans.”
“My mission in life is to extend a hand to the next generation.”
Empowering people financially is a team effort.
OneMain is committed to building a culture of inclusion and respect, whether building our team, creating responsible personal loans and credit cards, or providing financial wellness tools. Let’s talk about how you can join our mission.
AT SOUTHERN
(SCE), volunteerism isn’t just a footnote on the year-end company report. Employees are encouraged to volunteer for causes that align with the company’s values as well as their own, and the company regularly sponsors volunteer opportunities like Habitat for Humanity projects. Javier C. Rivera, a senior attorney at SCE, has not only joined some of those projects but has brought his daughter along to help build housing for those in need. His son, Rivera says, will follow suit when he’s old enough.
“It’s an opportunity to explain to my daughter how fortunate we are as a family,” the attorney says. “I can share some of my story with her and let her know how far we’ve come.”
There are parts of Rivera’s story that his daughter is ready to hear, and there are parts that may come when she’s a little older. The night before his first day at Yale, Rivera and his mother slept in their car: the family only had enough money for one hotel stay, and Rivera wanted to make sure his mother would be safe on her trip home.
Javier C. Rivera didn’t have much growing up, but his family still did whatever they could for others. Today, as an attorney, mentor, advocate, and community leader, Rivera makes it his mission to forward that mentality.
Rivera knows firsthand what it’s like to be housing insecure and to have exactly one pair of shoes. He is a product of public schools and of free-and-reduced lunch programs. But these experiences do not define all that he is: above all other things, Rivera is the gold standard for what good can be done in the world when someone is determined to pass on the support they received.
Rivera has spent his entire legal career finding ways to intersect his legal expertise with
his passion for advocacy, mentorship, and providing opportunities to those whose lives may have placed them well behind a traditional starting line.
The lawyer’s commitment to this work is directly linked to his family’s legacy: his grandmother was a community organizer within the African American and Latino communities for decades, and Rivera and his family always found themselves participating in clothing and food drives and offering up space in their small, overcrowded apartment to those who needed a place to sleep.
“We didn’t have a lot,” Rivera says. “But it was just understood in our family that you did whatever you could for your community.”
Similarly, Rivera’s focus on mentorship— including his efforts as a mock trial coach and his support of middle school and high school students through a global program called Street Law—is inspired and motivated by the mentors who have helped shape him.
The lawyer speaks at length about his first professional mentor, Dr. Bob Pollack, a white clinician who had little in common with a Black Puerto Rican student but who
“I still talk to all of [my mentors] to this day; I seek advice from them regularly, especially now about being a father and work/life balance, because there’s no manual for that.”
nonetheless helped guide Rivera through his early years at college then stayed in touch afterward.
Then there are his legal mentors: Jesus Roman and Arturo Padilla, who implored Rivera to not wait to get involved in his community and to start doing pro bono work immediately. These mentors—who also looked like Rivera—showed him that with determination and compassion, he could achieve his personal and professional goals.
If Rivera had it his way, every word in this story would be dedicated to these individuals and all the other mentors who have supported him over the years. “I was fortunate enough to connect with amazing people who shared their wisdom and time with me, and allowed me to learn from them,” Rivera says. “I still talk to all of them to this day; I seek advice from them regularly, especially now about being a father and work/life balance, because there’s no manual for that.”
Along with the mentorship Rivera himself now demonstrates, he’s also a fierce advocate for those in need. He sits on the associates advisory board for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which—along with providing board experience for younger attorneys— focuses on assisting unhoused or housing-insecure veterans.
“I participate in clinics where we do warrant expungement for unhoused individuals and help get back benefits for veterans who may have had them stripped due to housing insecurity,” Rivera says. “In all of these activities,
I’m very grateful that SCE has been supportive of me continuing to do this work.”
When Rivera’s mother was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Rivera joined the board of the Los Angeles chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, on which he served for eight years. His mother’s treatment fortunately proved successful, and her cancer remains in remission.
A DREAM COME TRUE
Rivera, his wife, and their two children recently moved into a new home, where Rivera says he has been able to see the immigrant’s dream—watching the next generation making gains on the previous one—play out in front of his eyes.
“I’ll watch my son walk out to our little yard, and I just think back to the life I wanted so badly when I was a little boy,” Rivera says. “That moment is the physical embodiment of a dream come true. It just makes me more motivated to continue my volunteer work, to take them with me, and see what can be done to make all of our lives better.”
The lawyer doesn’t claim to be a rags-to-riches story, and firmly rejects a narrative where he is the sole hero and victor. Rivera understands what it took to get him here and constantly thinks of those who have not had the impactful mentors, the support, and some of the lucky breaks he’s had. Rivera’s victory is seen in his devotion to his family, and in his passion for helping those whose stories he has, in many ways, shared.
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LimNexus LLP salutes Javier Rivera, senior attorney at Southern California Edison Company, on this well-earned recognition for his exemplary contributions to the legal industry. LimNexus LLP joins Hispanic Executive in championing excellence in the legal profession. At LimNexus LLP, diversity is in our DNA, and we exemplify inclusivity. limnexus.com/#/aboutus/diversityNO MATTER WHERE JOY LOPEZ HAS lived in her life—rural Texas, San Antonio, Dallas, California, and now Austin—there’s a saying that has always hung over her door. She sees it when she leaves every day. It’s only three words, but they have created the foundation for an empathetic and thoughtful leader: Make a Difference.
That short saying is reflected in her work as vice president and head of investment tax at Dimensional Fund Advisors but also has informed a commitment to compassionate leadership outside the office. That includes Lopez’s role as chair of the tax committee for the Investment Company Institute and her treasurer and executive board position on behalf of the National Domestic Violence Hotline (“the Hotline”).
“In everything I do, I try to make sure that mantra is there,” Lopez says. “All these roles have provided the opportunity to make a difference on a larger scale than my own small circle at home. And while the definition of ‘making a difference’ may be different across these areas, my goal is to leave a legacy of love and integrity.”
Lopez admits this entire philosophy may seem odd coming from a professional with more than twenty-five years of tax expertise. Someone with a master’s degree in accounting is not often the first person you might consider having a high degree of empathy—someone who says that prioritizing relationships and interrelational interactions is imperative not just to her success but to her happiness.
But Lopez’s commitment to mentorship, leadership, and advocacy is coupled with a work ethic instilled in her by her family. While neither her father nor her mother attended college, Lopez’s parents inspired a drive in their daughter that led her to be valedictorian and, ultimately, the first to complete a graduate-level degree in her family.
“That work ethic passed down from my grandfather and my dad is evident in all of my siblings, especially in my youngest sister, Shay, who is a rock star in her own right,” Lopez explains. “I was blessed to have people around me who modeled the kind of leader I wanted to be—and had the opportunity to learn from others about the kind of leader I didn’t want to be—and I’m grateful for the gifts God has given to maneuver through life in a way that honors Him, my fellow coworkers, my family, and others I meet along the way.”
Faith has always played an important role in Lopez’s life, and it has clearly impacted the way in which she chooses to lead.
“My desire as a leader is to help prepare, mentor, and teach individuals so that they can reflect strength of character, integrity, and thoughtfulness in their decisions. This holds true in the development of my team as professionals for life, not just as employees, as well as for those I support in my philanthropic endeavors or others in my circle of influence,” Lopez explains. “I want to know that at the end of the day, I have given everything of myself that I can give.”
Lopez’s continuing mission to make a difference is most profoundly apparent in her work with the National Domestic Violence Hotline, where the executive says the COVID-19 pandemic brought a new level of complexity to an already difficult reality.
“I know firsthand how essential the Hotline is to domestic violence survivors,” Lopez says. “The longer that I am part of this
“Facts and figures can be accessed easily, but being able to problem-solve is key. Analyze, assess, determine alternatives for solutions— those are truly the keys.”
For 25 years, the National Domestic Violence Hotline has answered the call –over 5 million calls, chats, and texts to date – of those a ected by relationship abuse. As the only 24/7/365 national service provider o ering services via call, chat, and text, we work to shine a light on domestic violence by supporting and advocating for survivors, providing hope in times of crisis, and promoting healthy relationships for all.
From our crisis and intervention hotline, to our unprecedented data on the state of domestic violence, to prevention programs like love is respect, The Hotline works at every level to ensure a future where all relationships are positive, healthy, and free from violence.
1.800.799.SAFE (7233)
Chat at thehotline.org
Text "START" to 88788
organization and involved in their initiatives, the more I feel like I’m making a difference.”
Part of Lopez’s work with the Hotline includes love is respect, a national resource aimed at disrupting and preventing unhealthy relationships through education and support of young people. Together, the Hotline, programs like love is respect, and other like-minded organizations like Esperanza United raise awareness of domestic violence. In each effort, Lopez says there are heartbreaking details that can challenge a person’s very understanding of the world they’re living in. But to her, that’s the point.
“We can get so focused on our own worlds and what is in our periphery that it can be very scary to think of some of the things that go on outside of it,” she explains. “But it can be empowering to look at those ugly truths that people try not to see and know you have the ability to make a difference and effect real change by standing up for what is right.”
Lopez takes being a leader very seriously. “I realize the choices I make in how I approach life matter—in all things,” she says.
Lopez acknowledges that her personal success acts as a model that others might hope to emulate. In fact, years after she graduated, she was asked to speak at her high school. Her message to the students wasn’t grounded in tax policy or accounting practices. It was to remind the students of why they were in school in the first place.
“An algebraic formula may be part of a solution,” Lopez says, laughing. “But I think we go to school to learn how to think. Facts and figures can be accessed easily, but being able to problem-solve is key. Analyze, assess, determine alternatives for solutions—those are truly the keys. Of equal importance is understanding how the choices you make have a downstream effect on others.”
The nurturing of those skills is as important as developing them. Lopez says that a commitment to focusing on things eternal influences her perspective on what should be priority. This mindset has translated to the relationships and skills she’s taken care to continually reevaluate and evolve. It’s helped her lead with an open heart and stay connected to the mantra that continues to drive her.
“My goal is to leave a legacy of love and integrity.”
Entrepreneur and seasoned political advisor Moe Vela is grateful for every roadblock he’s faced. They’ve helped form the blueprint for his life and career.
GROWING UP IN THE CLOSET IN 1960S Harlingen, Texas, wasn’t easy, and being part of a prominent family only increased the pressure that Moe Vela faced. Mix in years of bullying and constant internal anxiety, and Vela’s life could easily have taken a dark turn. Instead, he used those stresses to build a foundation for his future.
“I grew up in a typical Tejano family. It was filled with unconditional love and incredible values, and we had a long tradition of public and community service,” he says. “But I knew I was different, since the age of six or seven. I sometimes say I should have won an Oscar for my performance back then: I excelled at things I was ‘supposed’ to be interested in—hunting, fishing, and sports, for example—while still keeping my secret at bay and dealing with my own anxiety.”
Vela channeled those experiences in a positive way. “I discovered my inner survivor, even though I had contemplated suicide a few times,” he reveals. “What kept me together was trying to figure out my purpose in life. That’s been a profound theme throughout my life and career.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science and government from the University of Texas at Austin, Vela packed four suitcases and set out to pursue his dream: becoming a Broadway star. “New York offered my first glimmer of liberation,” he recalls. “I took singing and acting lessons and went on dozens of auditions. I never made it to Broadway, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that I tried, rather than regretting what might have been.”
Undaunted, he returned to Texas to get his JD from St. Mary’s University School of
Law. “It’s practically the family business,” Vela says, laughing. “I’m the seventh attorney in my family. My father was a Cameron County judge; my uncle, Filemon Vela Sr., served as a judge on the US District Court for the southern district of Texas; and my cousin, Filemon Vela Jr., is the current Congressman from the 34th Congressional District in Texas.”
In 1993, Vela entered the political field as an appointee to the first Clinton administration’s US Department of Agriculture. “At first, I worked in Congressional relations, and I later became an assistant to the administra-
tor of the Agricultural Marketing Service,” he says. During his tenure there, Vela noticeably improved the department’s employee diversity recruitment program.
In 1996, Vice President Al Gore summoned Vela to the West Wing and invited him to be his chief financial officer as well as his senior advisor on Hispanic and LGBTQ affairs.
When the second Clinton administration ended, Vela returned to the private and nonprofit sectors. “I grew up in Harlingen, Texas, one of the most impoverished areas per capita in the US,” he notes. “My family was
financially blessed, but I also saw the reality of the less fortunate.
“Working in Al Gore’s office triggered a profound commitment to advocacy,” Vela continues. “There I was, advising the secondmost powerful person on the planet on policies and issues that affected the nation’s Hispanic and LGBTQ communities. I’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime, and realized I needed to be an advocate for others who were struggling.”
And he followed through on that determination in spades. Vela created Diverse Directions, a consulting company for Latino marketing strategies and community outreach; headed up Alabama-based Strategia Hispanic Marketing; cofounded El Centro Legal Latino and the Alabama Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; and secured roles as the executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals as well as the senior vice president of multicultural strategies at United Dominion Realty Trust. Eventually, he became president of his own company, Comunidades LLC.
“All of those experiences helped me fine-tune my management and leadership skills and showed me the power of effective communications throughout human dynamics,” Vela says. “They’re the keys to all relationships and transactions.”
But Washington wasn’t through with him just yet. During the first Obama administration, then-Vice President Joe Biden invited Vela to serve as his director of administration and senior adviser. “At first, I said, ‘No, thanks’ because I was doing so well in the private sector. He called back the next day and said, ‘Moe, your country needs you,’” Vela recalls. “Given my family’s tradition of service, how could I turn him down?”
While Vela is currently president and CEO of MoeVela LLC, as well as a founding partner of the Vela Group LLC, he’s continued to add more titles to his résumé: most recently, he’s become executive producer,
cocreator, and costar of the streaming reality show Unicorn Hunters. Along with fellow costars such as Steve Wozniak, Lance Bass, and former US Treasury Secretary Rosa Rios, Vela helps spotlights pre-IPO companies with growth potential approaching $1 billion. The show enables viewers across the world to invest in those companies as well, often with as little as $1,000. They reached an audience of fifteen million in their pilot season alone.
Vela sees this latest role as another avenue for advocacy. “Historically, very little venture capital has gone to women-, gay-, or minorityowned companies,” he points out. “This is a way to expose some of them to a global audience. In turn, they can raise capital from people who could never participate before—a waitress in Bogotá, a housewife in Nairobi, a
retail worker in St. Louis. We see it as democratizing wealth creation.”
This perspective is reflected in the show’s makeup as well. “Two of the three executive producers are Hispanic,” Vela says. “Two panelists are gay, and several of them come from immigrant backgrounds.”
As of October 2021, the show had recently wrapped its second season. Already, there are plans for a third.
As Vela looks to the future of the show, he also reflects on his journey. “We should all live in a sense of profound gratitude for everything we have—every opportunity, every challenge—and for the trauma and the healing,” he says. “And be sure to treat everyone with decency, respect, and love. It all comes back to you.”
“What kept me together was trying to figure out my purpose in life. That’s been a profound theme throughout my life and career.”
Chief People Officer Tanya Reu-Narvaez helps the world’s largest real estate company advance its commitment to diversity and inclusion
BY BILLY YOSTTANYA REU-NARVAEZ HAS BEEN PART OF REALOGY for nearly twenty years. In that time, she has seen—and helped—the company drive substantial change.
Now the chief people officer, Reu-Narvaez is helping bring a feeling of mentorship, belonging, and positivity to everyone at Realogy. The CPO sat down with Hispanic Executive to answer some questions about her journey, the importance of inclusion and belonging, and HR’s expanding role at the leadership level.
What experiences do you feel have helped influence your own journey?
Since the beginning, Realogy has walked the talk when it comes to diversity. We have changed the trajectory of this industry, not just by having female executives at the helm of the world’s largest real estate company but by serving as an example of what can be done on an ongoing basis to ensure that diversity is not just an add-on but a true pillar of the business and the organization’s foundation.
Take, for example, Realogy’s Real Career Connections program, which empowers diverse employees to grow their careers. Realogy has matched thirty-one high-performing employees with mentors to broaden crossbusiness unit networks and explore career development over a five-month period, and this is just the beginning.
Understanding the importance of mentorship has been a critical component of my journey and continues to be what fuels me. I have taken great pride and fulfillment in supporting, developing, and mentoring future leaders in our field, as I believe strongly that it is an integral part of cultivating their strengths, helping them define the trajectory of their career development, and encouraging them to be bold in their decision making, however unpopular or unconventional the idea or vision.
What has embracing your true, authentic self looked like for you over the course of your career?
I grew up with tremendous responsibilities at a very young age, and that sense of being accountable and being resilient has shaped my “authentic self.” I have always been hardworking and determined, coming from a long line of strong Latina role models who helped shape me and taught me the importance of drive.
It wasn’t until I stepped into the corporate world that I was able to see how I could make an impact through my own personal journey and experiences. As I was beginning my career, and even as I rose through the ranks and began to acquire more seniority, I was accustomed to being the only woman in the room—and certainly the only Hispanic (and oftentimes, the only non-white person in the room).
More and more, I realized that I needed to pave the way for myself and others like me with similar backgrounds and aspirations. It became a matter of not just forging a new path but also creating a lasting impact that would potentially shape the future for myself, my peers, and successors.
What do efforts to foster inclusivity and belonging look like for you in your role?
When I stepped into the role as Realogy’s chief people officer in January 2021, one of the things I was most excited about was elevating the company’s focus and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI will always be a large area of focus because it’s a business strategy that enables Realogy to strengthen our teams, foster innovation, and fuel our growth.
Our company will always be at its best when it’s leveraging diverse perspectives, leveling the playing field for all employees, and when everyone is empowered to bring their whole selves to work. We do this in part by partnering with various industry associations, and through the work of our employees and affiliates, and leverage the culture builders in our company to carve a sense of community and belonging through our employee resource groups. We are also dedicated to fostering inclusivity and understanding through formal trainings that focus on topics such as unconscious bias.
Could you talk about some of the work you’re involved in through NAHREP and the Starfish Foundation?
As the largest residential real estate company in the US, Realogy is a champion of progress in the industry, and truly believes it’s our role as the leader in residential real estate to inspire our peers and pave the way for equality, opportunity, and fairness for homeowners everywhere.
We are building a fair future for all, in lockstep with our affiliated agents and brokers, through partnership and involvement in real estate associations that promote diversity and inclusion—including our rich and deep partnership with NAHREP (the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals).
One of the proudest moments of my career was being awarded NAHREP’s inaugural Ernest J. Reyes Founders Award for my work in educating and empowering practitioners that serve the Latino community.
Latinos are the only demographic in the US to increase their rate of homeownership for each of the past six years, a statistic that NAHREP tracks closely and that is made possible in part by the great work they are doing to educate and empower homeownership. But no one organization can do it alone, and that’s why our relationship is so critically important. Together, we can change the face of homeownership for generations to come.
I also take great pride in providing others, specifically Latinas, with opportunities and the ability to succeed. Through my work with the Starfish Foundation, which was cofounded by Soledad O’Brien, I have mentored a Latina since she arrived in the US from Mexico at just eight years old. She had been physically abused and didn’t think she had much chance in life to succeed, but instead she defied all the odds and eventually went on to become the first member of her family to graduate from college.
“Our company will always be at its best when it’s leveraging diverse perspectives .
when everyone is empowered to bring their whole selves to work.”
Patrick Apodaca has always felt driven toward public and community service. Today, he puts his experience to work on behalf of the people in his native New Mexico.
Patrick Apodaca
The Las Cruces native left home when he was seven: his father, a former school teacher and administrator, had joined the US State Department and decided to move his family to Cusco, Peru. Apodaca’s own career would eventually take him to Washington, DC, where he worked in the White House during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.
But the lawyer, community leader, and proud New Mexican would always find his way home. And now at PNM Resources, where he serves as senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, Apodaca helps ensure that electricity needs for approximately eight hundred thousand homes and businesses in New Mexico and Texas are met. All the while, he stays connected to the community through his work with nonprofits, his efforts as a mentor, and his determination to show the next generation of legal leaders just how powerful a commitment to public service can be.
The basis for Apodaca’s community-oriented outlook is easy for the lawyer to pinpoint.
“I always admired my dad and followed his
career closely, even from a young age,” he explains. “I looked up to his devotion to public service and his commitment to his community.”
When Apodaca’s father moved his family to Peru, his parents made the decision to place their children in schools where they would only speak Spanish. Although he struggled early on, Apodaca soon became bilingual.
“I only had very basic comprehension growing up, and it was mostly relegated to conversational phrases,” the lawyer says. “Fortunately, my dad got successive postings in Cusco, where we were able to develop a cultural home base of sorts.”
Living in Peru expanded Apodaca’s perspective and had a foundational impact on the future lawyer’s ability to be adaptive, resilient, and confident in times of struggle.
After returning home to obtain his bachelor’s at Georgetown University and completing his studies at Harvard Law School, Apodaca was able to put his passion for public service into action. Following a brief stint with the Democratic National Committee to support the 1976 Carter-Mondale presidential ticket and Carter’s victory, Apoda-
ca proved himself an asset when he joined the Carter-Mondale transition team. After Carter was sworn in as president, White House counsel Robert “Bob” Lipshutz asked Apodaca to join the Counsel’s Office.
“At just twenty-five, I suddenly had this amazing opportunity that was beyond my wildest dreams as an entry into public service,” Apodaca remembers. “As the junior lawyer in the office, I may have been low on the ladder, but I had the chance to participate in shaping policies [that were] important to our country and [that] made a difference. I just loved it.”
According to Apodaca, his observations of the president had a profound impact on him. Even if the overall success for President Carter’s term could be debated, Apodaca says, Carter did work feverishly for the public good both during and after his time in office.
“When Carter left the White House, he and his wife Rosalynn devoted their lives to the betterment of community on a global scale,” Apodaca says. “I’ve always held them in such high esteem as civic role models.”
After returning to New Mexico, Apodaca made two bids for attorney general of the state. He would ultimately lose out to more well-established names, but those experiences wouldn’t hinder the lawyer’s commitment to the public in any way.
Apodaca has served government entities such as the University of New Mexico as its general counsel. He has been called to serve as independent counsel for the city of Albuquerque, in which role he oversaw and investigated civilian complaints against city police. Apodaca has also aligned himself with an extensive list of community organizations, including the Albuquerque Community Foundation, the Albuquerque Academy, and New Mexico First, a grassroots organization that works to craft policy through town hall meetings.
Honoring his father and all of the other incredible mentors and role models he has encountered in his lifetime, Apodaca takes his responsibilities as a mentor very seriously. Throughout his career, he has participated in formal mentorship programs, through the state bar association and at his workplace, to share his experiences and provide advice to up-and-coming lawyers and leaders.
“Often, mentoring is just taking the time to have a focused talk with prospective leaders about setting career goals and how best to achieve them. Sometimes I offer tips on writing better briefs and memos, though they don’t always like my red pen,” Apodaca says, laughing. “In the corporate setting, I have found that guidance on how to prepare and present to senior management and the board of directors is especially appreciated and valued by aspiring leaders. I’m happy to provide whatever insight I might have to help them feel ready to take on the challenges as they advance their careers.”
Of course, Apodaca’s main priority at PNM is to help his team—and the company—tackle complex energy policies, which
are changing at a rapid and unprecedented pace for the electric utility industry. Decisions about renewable and clean energy will have long-term consequences and only become more and more important to the industry and customers, the lawyer says.
Apodaca’s colleagues affirm the importance of his work on these matters. “Being general counsel of a closely regulated utility like PNM means that the legal outcomes in regulatory cases determine the success of the company,” says Ray Gifford, a partner at the law firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP. “Patrick navigates these challenges for the biggest utility in New Mexico with a resolute
steadiness—and is helping lead the way nationally on the energy transition to renewable, clean energy.”
Apodaca sees it as his responsibility to continue bringing value to the decisionmaking process, guiding the company as it navigates this evolution and, in the end, serving the greater public good.
Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to be able to take on roles that are close to my interests and passions,” Apodaca says. “If you are interested in serving your community, you can do it while pursuing a career path in the private sector. Just don’t be shy about getting involved.”
“At just twenty-five, I suddenly had this amazing opportunity that was beyond my wildest dreams as an entry into public service.”Troutman Pepper: “We are proud to have worked with Patrick for many years. Patrick’s passion and leadership has been instrumental in helping guide PNM Resources through a number of complex transactional and regulatory matters in an effort to build a clean energy future for New Mexico.” –Mason Bayler, Partner and Department Chair - Transactional
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, FEW ORGANIZATIONS realized the need to recognize the growing significance of the Hispanic community and their contributions in the US. NielsenIQ’s (erstwhile Nielsen) first employee resource group (ERG) was HOLA (Hispanic Organization for Leaders in Action). It started in 2006: its purpose was to empower Hispanic employees, increase workplace engagement, improve corporate policies, and enrich work and home communities.
Throughout the past fifteen years, the company has worked to create a strong Hispanic community and provide professional development opportunities. “The mission and influence of HOLA has continued to evolve,” says Myriam Vidalon, senior vice president of diversity, talent, and culture.
Myriam Vidalon SVP of Diversity, Talent & Culture NielsenIQ
Last year, NielsenIQ held an unusual quinceañera that perfectly exemplified the company’s commitment to this community. Participants didn’t dress up to eat enchiladas, tamales, and arroz before ending the party by cutting an elaborate cake lined with dolls. This quinceañera didn’t mark a young girl’s transition to womanhood, either—it was thrown to honor fifteen years of inclusion for Hispanics in the workplace at NielsenIQ.
The event brought together the company’s most senior leaders, including the CEO, chief human resources officer, and chief transformation officer, to highlight the contributions and celebrate the diversity of Hispanic employees at NielsenIQ. “Being an HOLA ERG leader for three years truly helped me navigate the company in different ways,” Vidalon says as she recalls her leadership of HOLA at the start of her career and how the ERG shaped her own path within NielsenIQ. “From gaining visibility to senior leaders, showcasing my ability to set a strategy and execute, all the way to mobilizing volunteers to work with purpose, this experience fueled my passion for D&I and shaped my career path.
“Our plan is to continue to strengthen the leadership support, development, and visibility of Hispanics at NielsenIQ,” the SVP continues. “We used this milestone celebration to reflect on having this conversation about inclusion for fifteen years and inspire other groups that have followed in HOLA’s footsteps to strengthen our multicultural workforce.”
NielsenIQ has 2,500 employees in nine total ERGs that not only emphasize corporate inclusion but also bring measurable business outcomes. “We have operations in nearly
one hundred markets around the world, and we need to reflect what real consumers look and sound like in the marketplace,” Vidalon says. “We can’t do that with accuracy if we are all the same.” With a diverse and engaged workforce, NielsenIQ ensures its measurements and reports accurately represent the population.
After her first year of college, Vidalon toured the most remote parts of her native country of Peru. Interacting with shopkeepers, artisans, farmers, children, musicians, and laypeople changed her life. “I was surrounded by different cultures even in my own homeland, and I started to understand the value and richness these differences bring to one country,” she says.
Vidalon returned home determined to think about diversity and inclusion long before D&I was a corporate buzzword. She earned a degree in marketing from the University of Tampa and took a job at Nielsen.
Sixteen years later, Vidalon is helping her company integrate diversity, inclusion, and accountability into all that it does. Since taking on the diversity leadership role in 2018, she has solicited feedback on existing ERGs, crowdsourced new ideas, and launched initiatives designed to evolve and reshape the D&I
“If you listen to your colleagues, you build empathy, and
program. During her tenure, the company has grown its ERG presence from twenty-five to eighty-four countries and from fifty to six hundred volunteer leaders. Additionally, Vidalon created local “inclusion impact” teams that welcome new hires, build culture, and serve as the regional voice to amplify each ERG.
In 2021, NielsenIQ’s D&I team (led by Vidalon) received sponsorship support from the CEO and NielsenIQ customer success leadership and introduced NielsenIQ University, a one-semester data analytics training program that gives historically underrepresented students the chance to explore careers in the popular consumer packaged goods industry. Enrolled students receive a stipend, mentoring opportunities, professional development, and references for internships and job interviews.
“This program is a true statement to our commitment to contributing to a better and more equal CPG industry,” Vidalon says. “By investing in our youth, we will move closer to ensuring Hispanics are represented in the data and marketing analytics space.”
In response to social unrest and growing racial issues in America, Vidalon and
her team of D&I practitioners also launched “The Home Truth Series ,” a collection of firsthand accounts from employees that help colleagues learn from their personal experiences with racial bias. “If you listen to your colleagues, you build empathy, and empathetic teams can empower people and solve problems,” Vidalon says.
NielsenIQ is also helping brands and advertisers understand multicultural consumers. According to findings by NielsenIQ, “consumers of all cultural backgrounds have demanded that businesses take action to diversify, be more inclusive, and less biased.”
Hispanic consumers care about causes like homelessness and food insecurity, the company has found. They want to make a difference in their communities, and so does NielsenIQ.
“At NielsenIQ, we want to provide truths and facts that can create food equity for underrepresented communities worldwide,” Vidalon says. “Showcasing what we know through these reports, it’s the first step of the journey. Whenever we turn to our Hispanic Heritage diaries, there will always be a page to learn from [in terms of] how our people challenged status quo, brought in perspectives at work, and inspired through their personal stories to build this inclusive culture.”
empathetic teams can empower people and solve problems.”
The NFL showed Paul Francisco that each individual person must contribute. Now, as chief diversity officer at State Street, he is implementing new policies to build a winning team of his own.
BY ZACH BALIVAPAUL FRANCISCO WASN’T PREPARED for winter in Boston. The seventeen-yearold from Siguatepeque, Honduras, had never been on an airplane and certainly didn’t know what to expect in the big city. He didn’t have a winter coat, and instead wore a simple white T-shirt. His long, thin frame revealed bare ankles between his ill-fitting khakis and his loafers—the only pair of shoes he owned.
In the car, Francisco pressed his face against the glass, enthralled by the lights, the buildings, and the movement. His aunt’s house seemed enormous, and equally exciting. Francisco had never seen so many television sets in one household—she had one in every room.
Francisco was in the United States to visit family and go Christmas shopping—or so he thought. On the eve of his intended departure,
Francisco learned the truth. His family was returning to Honduras without him. He would stay, learn English, and get an education.
The next day, Francisco was setting out to explore the city when a family member warned him to stay away from Southie, the densely populated part of the city known for its history of housing segregation. “I had never been told I couldn’t go somewhere based on the color of my skin,” he says. “It was the first time I realized I was different. I was Afro-Latino.”
The memory stuck with Francisco as he entered high school and began to learn English. “I didn’t fit in anywhere. I was Black, but I didn’t speak English. Nobody knew where to put me,” he recalls. Francisco focused on losing his accent and fitting in— on feeling like he belonged.
And he soon found a place where he belonged. One afternoon, the school’s starting quarterback asked the tall, thin, and strong Francisco to play football the following day. He rushed home, borrowed money from his aunt, and bought everything he thought he needed to play his version of football. Then, he showed up with cleats, shin guards, and a round ball. The rest of the players had helmets and pads. Francisco had confused American football for soccer.
Despite the misunderstanding, Francisco learned the game and thrived as a tight end. He was All Academic, scored the most touchdowns at his position in state history, went to Boston University on an athletic scholarship, and became the first NFL player from Honduras.
As Francisco saw people from different backgrounds, races, and mindsets coming together to form a team, he started to think deeply about inclusion and diversity. When injuries cut his playing days short, he decided to explore those issues more fully. He transitioned to the corporate world, led on-campus recruitment strategies for an insurance provider, and gained expertise as a diversity practitioner.
Today, Francisco is a senior vice president and the chief diversity officer at State Street, a leading global financial services provider. In this role, he develops and implements inclusion, equity, and diversity programs that impact forty thousand employees, their clients, and their communities.
Following the political unrest of 2020, the SVP saw an opportunity to foster a sense of allyship. He helped State Street create an initiative called Ten Actions to Address Racism and Inequality. Those actions include improving employee, board, and industry representation for Black and Latino professionals; conducting anti-racism training;
increasing civic engagement; and increasing spend with minority suppliers.
In addition to managing State Street’s progress on its diversity goals, Francisco develops and trains inclusive leaders. “My own experience taught me that a sense of belonging is important, and that’s what we’re building at State Street,” he says.
The SVP’s programs are designed to ensure that everyone feels at home, has a voice, and has access to the same professional opportunities. Internally, twenty-four
employee resource groups help fulfill this mission. Externally, Francisco and State Street work with the Association of Latino Professionals for America, National Association of Black Accountants, National Association of Asian American Professionals, and the National Black MBA Association to mine best practices and explore partnerships.
Francisco knows how valuable it is to work with such nonprofits, as not-for-profit organizations played a key role in his successful transition from Honduras to the United States. “Community organizations changed my life and are still at the forefront of changing communities of color, so serving in them is part of my calling,” he says. After all, there might be another talented “Paul Francisco” out there who dreams of a career in professional sports or business but lacks funding, education, or mentorship.
Today, Francisco serves on a variety of school, institutional, and nonprofit boards, including the boards of Cathedral High School, the Base Inc., the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Uncornered, and Morgan Memorial Goodwill. He also cofounded the New Commonwealth Racial Equity and Social Justice Fund and coleads a networking organization known as the Dinner Group Inc. This last group convenes men of color with the purpose of creating professional networking opportunities, mentorship, and community engagement.
The former NFL star is still guided by his time on the gridiron. When a football team wins the Super Bowl, active players, injured players, trainers, MVPs, GMs, and front-office personnel all receive identical championship rings. Each individual person matters. Everyone has something to contribute. A team wins together. That’s the mindset Paul Francisco is bringing to diversity, equity, and inclusion at State Street.
“I had never been told I couldn’t go somewhere based on the color of my skin. It was the first time I realized I was different. I was Afro-Latino.”
LIKE SO MANY FIRST-GENERATION LATINAS, PATRICIA CORREA doesn’t see her own journey so much as her own but as a part of a larger narrative. Correa’s mother and father both emigrated from Guanajuato, Mexico, in their early teens and raised a family of four on the South Side of Chicago. They supported Correa and her siblings in their pursuit of professional careers, as did many other individuals who reached out to encourage Correa and help her find her path.
Correa’s story may be very familiar to first-generation Americans, but that familiarity should be celebrated. It’s with the same spirit that Correa has helped organizations from PepsiCo to Kellogg’s to Eaton open their doors to new talent—and to continue to find new ways of reaching out to those who are motivated like her but just need support, coaching, and a familiar face to guide them on their own journeys.
“I’ve always wanted to associate myself with an organization where I felt connected to a mission and a vision,” says Correa, who currently serves as senior vice president of human resources for the industrial sector at Eaton. “I’ve been fortunate, but also choiceful, in the organizations that I’ve had the opportunity to join and benefit from.”
Correa’s conversation with Hispanic Executive was perfectly timed with regard to the SVP’s mission at Eaton, as the very morning of speaking, Eaton had published its inaugural Global Inclusion and Diversity Transparency Report. “We’ve made progress and know there is more work to do,” Correa says. “But we know that we have the mechanisms in place to support our path forward.”
Inclusion and diversity, says the SVP, is a top priority at the company. Eaton is committed to being a model of inclusion and diversity and has a wealth of employee resources, including #VAMOS!, an Inclusion Eaton Resource Group whose membership of Latinos, Hispanics, and allies includes nearly a thousand people, as well as inclusion councils and robust learning programs aimed at helping team members build their own inclusion capabilities.
Correa says that Eaton’s DNA makes it an ideal place to build out these efforts. “We have so many incredibly talented and passionate people here. We’re an innovative, technology-driven company where people want to learn how to develop and grow,” she explains. “Learning is happening all around us, every day. It has a profound impact on everything we do. At Eaton, our approach to learning is in our DNA and is guided by our Leadership Model. It’s one of the attributes that makes us a leader in our industry. We’re curious, adaptable, and willing to share and teach what we know.”
Correa is eager to speak about Eaton’s culture, but not particularly comfortable talking about herself. However, she’s conscious that someone, somewhere may connect with her story and find empowerment, hope, and faith in hearing about the diversity and inclusion goals she’s working toward at Eaton.
“As a Latina, [I know that] making an impact is about leading with purpose and courage,” Correa says. “Creating opportunities for others is incredibly important to me. If I can help someone grow and develop, or if my leadership journey can inspire just one person, it’s worth it.”
It’s why the SVP is so adamant about sponsoring talent and making herself a champion and mentor for others. Such efforts, she explains, help create a positive feedback loop of progress and reaching back to help others advance.
“I know this works because it has happened to me throughout my career,” Correa says. “The goal is to find a way to continually repeat this cycle to make sure that others can follow.”
Part of creating that cycle is getting to future leaders earlier in their careers, and the SVP is particularly proud of the partnerships Eaton has built with universities. With Latinos attending secondary institutions in higher numbers than ever, those partnerships allow Eaton to reach out to future talent and assure them there are organizations who take their advancement seriously.
While Correa knows it’s important for young leaders to have mentors with similar backgrounds to them, she also firmly believes that non-Latinos need to step up. “In my own career, I didn’t have a Latina mentoring me,” she notes. “I had an ally who thought I was smart and who thought I could do a lot more. They wanted to help me grow.”
PatriciaCorrea SVP of HR, Industrial Sector Eaton
“I’ve always wanted to associate myself with an organization where I felt connected to a mission and a vision.”
Correa points to #Vamos, for which she acts as an executive champion, as a perfect example of an organization that harnesses its singular power while also including others who align with the group’s mission. “We’re not going to solve this problem all on our own,” she says. “We need more critical mass, and we need the decision-makers who are
currently part of that process aligned with us. We can’t just talk to ourselves.”
Correa isn’t blind to the numbers. She can’t afford to be. But she also knows that her organization is firmly committed to changing the current picture. “There are times when you look at the numbers and think we should be so much further along,” the SVP
admits. “But I think Eaton is a prime example of a corporate partner that is committed to advancing representation across the board.”
The SVP is hopeful. She has seen just how far one generation can rise with encouragement and support, and she’s hoping to create a million more success stories like hers.
WHEN MEETING GONZALO PALACIO, IT IS evident that he is passionate about working for a mission-driven organization. Trained as an engineer and now a financial services expert, he chose a career path in which he can have a positive impact in the lives of others.
Gonzalo Palacio is inspired by the impact a mission-driven organization can have on financial well-being for all
BY ZAYVELLE WILLIAMSONHe credits his family for instilling in him a strong set of values that guide his work as senior vice president of credit card at Oportun. “My mother worked at a nonprofit that provides discounted healthcare, education, and grocery services for working families, as well as down-payment subsidies for first-time home buyers,” explains Palacio, a native of Cali, Colombia. “I had the opportunity to intern at the nonprofit and saw firsthand the joy in members’ faces when they received the keys to their first home thanks to a down payment grant.”
Palacio’s paternal grandparents owned a pharmacy in a small, rural community located twenty miles south of Cali. Growing up, he worked the pharmacy counter during summer breaks, joining in what had become a community gathering place that
also served as a vaccine distribution center— vaccines that were usually administered by his grandmother.
Palacio emigrated from Colombia when he was eighteen years old to go to college at Tulane University in New Orleans. He was drawn by the city’s rich culture and the school’s involvement in the community. He enrolled in a five-year program that allowed him to complete a degree in engineering science in three years, followed by an MBA started during his senior year. Palacio’s first job out of college was at Capital One, where he was quickly immersed in a strong culture of data analytics and marketing that brought together financial services and technology.
At Capital One, Palacio honed his expertise in marketing analytics and product strategy, and also had the opportunity to listen directly to customers’ personal experiences with money. “I had a chance to travel the country to connect one-on-one with customers, listening to their stories and having conversations that went deeper and deeper into understanding their needs and circumstances,” he says, “how central financial services are to their lives and what can be done to solve their needs.”
Despite a renewed focus on the customer by traditional banks, Palacio notes, there are many consumers who are left out and that they are typically the ones who have the highest need to access funds in times of difficulty. As senior vice president of credit card at Oportun, he is helping to serve a customer base that has been left behind. Oportun provides affordable personal loans to those with little to no credit history—and, since Palacio joined the company, credit cards.
“Oportun customers are looking for an opportunity to prove their creditworthiness and build a foundation that can help them achieve their own version of the American Dream,” Palacio explains. “Many of our personal loan customers were asking when we were going to offer a credit card. We also saw it in the data—a significant number
of our customers, who did not have a credit score before using an Oportun loan, had since opened a credit card at other institutions who now deemed them as creditworthy.
“Our job is to build financial products that help improve the financial health of our customers,” he adds. Palacio established the credit card program from the ground up, starting up the partner ecosystem with the card issuing bank and processor and recruiting a talented team of product, marketing, operations, and technology experts. The pilot program launched in late 2019 and “immediately saw a strong response and demand for the product,” Palacio says.
Oportun has programs to offer credit lines to consumers with little or no credit history, as well as those with no SSN or US ID, where traditional credit card issuers may typically decline such consumers. It is serviced in English and Spanish across all customer touchpoints.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, just weeks after the pilot launch, Palacio and his team immediately came together to help customers by “deferring payments, waiving fees, adding flexible payment options, and proactively notifying customers about their availability. It was inspiring to see the team live by our customer care value to deliver these solutions in record time.”
Now, as both customers and the economy start to recover, the program is scaling at a fast pace with a strong NPS (Net Promoter Score) and credit quality. “We are just getting started,” the SVP says. “Our next product releases will add features to help customers track their credit and learn how use it wisely, setting up faster balance paydowns and new mobile tools designed to solve their needs.”
Palacio cites a customer who responded to a product survey saying, “You gave me a chance when no one else would.” It is not lost on him that believing and making experiences like this possible is a life mission worth pursuing.
“Our job is to build financial products that help improve the financial health of our customers.”
SARA GONZALES-ERHAN’S
journey to her current role as the legal director for customer trust, products, and operations at cloud computing company Nutanix Inc. has made her an impactful leader not just in law but in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Gonzales-Erhan is particularly dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals, and has even founded a corporate DEI affinity group for people connected to that community.
In all of these efforts, Gonzales-Erhan has been inspired by her son, who is neurodivergent and would directly benefit from similar efforts. The lawyer’s powerful connection to individuals whose lives may not fit a traditional narrative has made her an empathetic and compassionate leader whose impact is felt far beyond her day job.
Gonzales-Erhan was kind enough to sit down with Hispanic Executive to discuss her journey, her son’s unique circumstances, and the need for advocacy for those who often struggle to be heard.
Could you talk a little bit about your career trajectory and some of the impactful experiences that have helped inform your leadership?
A huge influence as a young child was having parents who felt it was extremely important not only to be inclusive but to acknowledge and accept differences. When we think about unconscious bias, often we think of the negative, but I truly believe that my parent’s influence and focus on this led me to become more “person focused” rather than just appreciating specific skills and attributes (or immediately noticing differing abilities in these).
My parents had the wisdom and foresight to send me to a summer camp for a few years that was for both “regularly” abled and “dis” abled children. We participated in the same activities, but I was also given the opportunity to witness the everyday challenges faced by the disabled children in my group.
If you’ve never had to navigate it for yourself, you simply never think about how you are going to guide a wheelchair down a
steep hill or what it requires to use a public restroom when you have mobility, visual, or developmental impairments. Seeing this part of the human experience up close was hugely impactful on my interactions toward other people generally.
It wasn’t until law school that I realized that there was potential for me to have influence in this area professionally. I took a part-time job at a law firm and one of the founding partners, who had been mobility-challenged himself, was one of the nation’s first vocal disability lawyers: he won cases to support inclusion of people in wheelchairs or who were blind/deaf on juries as well as cases that guaranteed equal access to public buildings and transportation, and generally championed a level playing field for the disabled. Unfortunately, he passed away a couple years before I worked there, but his passion and dedication to this cause was still evident in the firm and it definitely steered me into more of a public interest bent.
Fast-forward twenty years, and I’ve been faced with raising my own child with developmental disability and mental illness. Without these early experiences, I think I would have been overwhelmed or paralyzed or both. Instead (much to my own surprise), I was able to approach it with pragmatism. My attitude was, “Take each day, hour, minute at a time and solve for the task at hand.” But it also helped me realize the incredible impact of awareness and advocacy.
I’d love for you to talk more about neurodiversity and the importance of changing the way this has been thought of as a “disability.”
Neurodiversity is just a difference in the way the brain is wired. I think we have traditionally labeled it as a disability because it has had, in many cases, a profound impact on daily
Sara Gonzales-Erhan Director of Legal for Customer Trust, Products & Operations Nutanix
living or employment, but just like any other aspect of diversity, it’s really just a different set of attributes that someone possesses. Like someone who is highly creative and artistic versus someone who is more analytical and process oriented.
How has this mindset informed your broader mission of awareness, acceptance, and accessibility?
I’m very lucky to be at a company that supports and celebrates diversity—so much so that I was
asked to found a DEI alliance group around disability, neurodiversity, and mental illness.
Having an adult son who will most likely need strong support from his broader community as he journeys through life has motivated me to continue to push for awareness wherever I can. I couldn’t think of a better “added bonus” to my career if I can also do this on behalf of other parents and caregivers in the context of my profession and through the support of the companies I choose to work for.
How else have you seen this commitment to DEI play out at Nutanix? What makes the company the right fit for you?
I’ve found a community at Nutanix that has really rallied around the idea of my broader mission. In my role as a legal director and product counsel for Nutanix, I’ve found so many people I work with in my “day job” who are also touched by neurodiversity, mental illness, or “disability” in their own daily lives. I think it truly helps build a strong company culture and a sense of community when you know that your colleagues also share similar personal challenges (and successes) and are empathetic to each other’s journey.
Nutanix also fosters a number of initiatives in support of DEI generally. One example: the employee-led “Nutanix LIFE Groups,” which aim to connect our employees through common life experiences and backgrounds. This program is particularly important to me as the founder and leader of the “People First Alliance,” the LIFE Group which promotes (internally and externally) a person-first approach for people impacted by neurodiversity, disability, and mental illness. Leading this group has afforded me an amazing benefit—learning about and participating in the personal journeys of our employees who also have connections to these communities.
But it’s not just the employees at Nutanix. We also have partners, customers, and vendors with whom I have made long-term business and personal connections because of our shared experience with supporting or caring for people in our lives who are impacted by disability or neurodiversity.
I truly believe that it’s all of these connections that do so much more than what one big impactful volunteer event or donation drive could do to support this community. These individual connections, made and sustained over time, are what cascades out and organically grows efforts to expand awareness, acceptance, and inclusion. And Nutanix has provided me with an amazing forum to help facilitate this growth.
“My attitude was, ‘Take each day, hour, minute at a time and solve for the task at hand.’”
Today, Aldrete is advocating for overlooked communities as she helps her new employer, Alliant Energy Corp, bridge the digital divide and bring broadband access to rural areas. Doing so means she must navigate the competitive and highly regulated word of utilities—a space that often lacks diversity. “There aren’t a lot of women in the energy or utility sectors, and there are fewer women of color, but that’s changing,” she says. “The world is changing quickly, and we need diversity of thought to drive this industry and every other industry forward.”
Aldrete is comfortable blazing her own trail. She was born in the United States but raised in Mexico. At age eleven, her family returned to Milwaukee, and Aldrete found herself caught between two cultures. Her parents wanted her and her sister to retain their culture and speak Spanish in the home, but her peers pressured her to be fully American and communicate only in English. “Everyone wants to put immigrants in a box, but it’s important to break free from expectations,” she says.
Living in the space between two cultures is what transformed Aldrete into a fighter. She lost herself in music, enrolled in spelling bees, and signed up for advanced reading programs to accelerate her English language skills.
BY ZACH BALIVAGOOGLE GRISELDA ALDRETE’S NAME, and you’ll pull up some interesting results: “leader,” “opposition,” “community advocate,” “controversy,” “champion,” “criticism,” “policymaker,” “mentor.” None of it fazes Aldrete. Neither the press nor her critics have taken the time to get to know her—as evidenced by the fact that those who are actually familiar with Aldrete apply far different labels to her and her work. They use words like “fighter” and “transformer.”
Meanwhile, her father continued to make his way in a foreign land. Although he found work as a steamfitter, he often encountered discouragement, discrimination, and other setbacks. “My parents told me education is the one thing nobody can take from you. They wanted my sister and me to stand up for ourselves without relying on anyone else,” Aldrete says.
That message compelled Aldrete to push forward and become a lifelong learner. She earned a partial scholarship to study criminology and law at Marquette University while working three jobs to make ends meet.
Griselda Aldrete has made a career out of standing up for people and causes she believes in. Now, she’s fighting for diversity, clean energy, broadband access, and other community needs as a director at Alliant Energy.
“We’re tackling real issues people in our communities care about. And when we fight for these changes, we’re building a better future together.”
Over the course of her career, Griselda Aldrete’s eyes have been opened to the importance of volunteering, mentoring, collaborating, and relationshipbuilding, as well as to the fact that all of this plays an important role when trying to change the world— whether in the nonprofit world, the government, or in the corporate space. Aldrete serves on several boards, including the boards for the State Bar of Wisconsin (public utilities section) and UBBA, the Utility Broadband Alliance. She also donates her time to Building Brave, a group that connects female students to professional women in the STEM fields.
After earning her bachelor’s, she went on to earn her master’s in criminal justice from the University of Nebraska–Omaha.
Aldrete started her career in journalism working for ¡Aquí! Milwaukee, a monthly magazine that was published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Specialty Media Division and that targeted second- and thirdgeneration Hispanics in southeast Wisconsin. Through this work, Aldrete learned more about the Milwaukee Latino community and about the importance of nonprofit work. She would eventually begin her career in nonprofit work with United Migrant Opportunity Services (UMOS), later moving on to lead the Cream City Foundation. However, it was when she joined Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee (HPGM) that she found herself flourishing. She began as the orga-
nization’s first program manager, helping to manage day-to-day operations, supervising student outreach, and crafting the strategic vision, and eventually became their president and CEO.
Aldrete was helping Latino kids discover a career path at HPGM, but she was also planning for her own future. “I wanted to be a role model for our students and also grow my skills to better serve the community,” she explains. She returned to Marquette University and completed law school while working full-time.
In 2019, Mayor Tom Barrett recruited Aldrete to run Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission. She became the first Latino to hold that office.
In the aftermath of the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis and the shooting of
Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Aldrete was put in the national spotlight, and a theme from her childhood quickly reemerged. Some constituents accused her of being biased towards the Latino police chief. Others voiced concern about her “inability” to understand the racial profiling of African Americans and the ACLU’s stop-and-frisk lawsuit against the city.
Despite such accusations, Aldrete continued moving forward, and investigated several officers involved in high-profile controversies. However, the work began to take a toll, and she resigned after serving in the position for eighteen months. “I still bear my father’s last name, and I wanted to leave the job with my dignity intact,” she says. “I’m proud of the change I tried to bring forth and the way I conducted myself, and I hope the city ends up in a better place.“
Aldrete’s unique blend of nonprofit, legal, and community leadership experience put her services in high demand, and motivated Alliant Energy to seek her out. Now, as director of stakeholder engagement, she’s working to advance key initiatives for 975,000 electric and 420,000 natural gas residential and business customers in Iowa and Wisconsin who rely on the energy company’s services.
According to Aldrete, Alliant Energy’s leaders have long discussed leveraging their networks to address the growing digital divide. The events of 2020 accelerated those conversations. “Improving broadband access was once something we should do, but COVID made it something we have to do, because high-speed internet is a necessity that should be reliable, accessible and affordable by all,” Aldrete notes.
Rural, underserved, and minority communities were hit hard by the pandemic, the director explains, and many in those communities lack access to telemedicine and remote learning or employment opportunities. Aldrete is working behind the scenes to partner with internet service providers who will use Alliant Energy’s infrastructure to provide access through pilot programs in 2022.
Aldrete can often be found out in the community talking with constituents and listening to their concerns. The issues she brings to the table following those conversations involve inclusion, sustainability, and social justice, and Alliant Energy is responding by promoting diversity, investing in solar projects, and engaging tribal governments.
“We’re tackling real issues people in our communities care about,” Aldrete says. “And when we fight for these changes, we’re building a better future together.”
Congratulations to Griselda Aldrete for her recognition as a Latino Leader and for her mission-driven work as Director of Stakeholder Engagement at Alliant Energy.
Powering leaders today and beyondCONVERSATIONS AT THE TOP WITH DONNA DE LA CRUZ
Paul Diaz has been president and CEO of Myriad Genetics for less than two years— but the impact of his innovation and growth plan has already been felt across the company and the communities it serves
Today, Diaz leads Myriad Genetics as president and CEO, and his goal is to lead by example and advocate not just for employees but for the communities the company serves.
Diaz took the helm at Myriad in August 2020 and is using the lessons he learned from mentors to engage his teams and employees. He speaks particularly fondly of his first mentor, his grandfather, who worked as a surgeon in his native Cuba before immigrating to Miami.
Diaz’s grandfather found work in local hospitals, inspiring Diaz, who began volunteering at a local hospital in Miami as part of his Eagle Scout project. Diaz worked various jobs at the hospital, but one experience stands out.
“The hospital administrator asked me to be his interpreter since he did not speak Spanish,” Diaz recalls. “A couple of times a week, I would go with him as he visited every patient’s room. He made healthcare personal. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time, and that left an impression on me about listening to patients and staff and understanding if people were getting what they needed. This experience left an impression about the importance of making it personal beyond all the clinical expertise. It showed me that good patient care is listening to what patients need and what providers need to care for them.”
Paul J. Diaz President and CEO Myriad Genetics
Mentors have played a huge role in Paul Diaz’s life since he was a boy working odd jobs at a local Miami hospital.
Diaz followed through on his goal of becoming an active listener, even as he has pushed for transformative change in healthcare. He continues to seek opportunities to engage with employees, whom he prefers to call “teammates.” He also is known to urge those around him to tackle problems from the point of view of a patient or physician. Diaz points to these practices as the ones that have contributed to his career in healthcare leadership, but they are also the ones he has leaned on to help Myriad Genetics emerge from tough times and navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
“One of our biggest advantages is our 2,300 dedicated teammates who are patient- and mission-focused,” Diaz says. “We come to work to do good and to do well. And at Myriad Genetics, we empower patients with vital genetic insights and help healthcare providers better detect, treat, and prevent disease. It’s meaningful and it matters.
“But clearly, it hasn’t been easy to do this remotely and build a trust-based organization through Zoom,” the CEO continues. “We are all dealing with how to stay connected. We’re trying to meet teammates where they are, supporting them and figuring it out one team at a time.”
One way Diaz and his leadership team have worked to stay engaged with employees is through the creation of a group composed of cross-functional leaders. That group (approximately sixty to seventy managers) holds regular forums to discuss how the pandemic and other issues are affecting employees. Those forums provide space for team members to speak openly about problems they are facing and the best ways to solve them.
This approach has also been helpful in supporting the Myriad employees who work in labs and can’t easily do their jobs remotely. “We strive to look at issues from a personal perspective, exploring new solutions and transforming how we can work differently and digitally.”
One drawback of the pandemic is that Diaz can’t practice his habit of leadership by walking around and talking with people at all levels of the organization in their work environment. Instead, in this era of remote work, Diaz has had to settle for “digital walks” with employees.
“My goal is to get out of people’s way and break down silos so we can take better care of our customers and our business.” Diaz is quick to point to the team around him for stepping up to new ways of working. “We need to apply the same science to running our business that we do to our science and our R&D and discovery,” he says. “We’re not completely there yet, but we’re on our way.”
As CEO, Diaz also considers it a priority to listen to the diverse populations and communities that Myriad serves. It is only through such efforts, he emphasizes, that Myriad can better serve patients across the nation and world.
Diaz is especially excited about how the company is recommitting to innovation and to enhancing critical testing technologies. In 1996, he explains, Myriad introduced the first genetic test to assess the risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. That test has since become part of the standard of care for determining a person’s risk of developing these cancers.
“Now, Myriad has launched the first and only test of its kind that gives people of all ancestries a risk profile for breast cancer,” Diaz says. “The pandemic exposed the extreme inequities of the healthcare system. We are trying to make it much more inclusive.”
Myriad is embracing the same approach for other tests it is developing, including prenatal tests. As Diaz explains, this is part of Myriad’s decision to focus on mental health, women’s health, and oncology, and to build a culture of service excellence, innovation, and reduced complexity and cost within those three areas.
Genetic testing is a key building block for the future of precision medicine, but Diaz says it’s not as widely available, nor as accessible and affordable, as it should be. The company is addressing these challenges by focusing on access for all, ease of testing, and growing partnerships and collaborations.
“We believe genetic testing should be as common as a blood count, mammogram, or ultrasound—and we don’t want money to get in the way of access to needed tests,” the CEO stresses, noting that 95 percent of payers cover Myriad testing in network. “We are continuing our long-standing financial assistance programs. As
our business performance continues to improve, we can invest more in research and development and in our communities, giving opportunities for health screenings and other initiatives.”
Diaz has high confidence his employees will continue to innovate by applying the power of technology and data-driven insights. He also believes in the company’s ability to find new ways to reduce health disparities across racial, social, and economic lines. Myriad already is accelerating a shift toward telehealth and virtual care while expanding access to tests and services for underserved communities, and Diaz says the company will also expand efforts to develop software that will help make reaching people easier.
Myriad is the fourth healthcare company Diaz has worked at. He began his career as a lawyer, but one of his clients—a nursing home administrator—convinced Diaz to leave his legal practice and join a start-up company called Allegis Health Services in 1989. Allegis grew into a well-respected post-acute company that managed nursing homes before being sold to Mariner Health Group in 1996. Diaz later became executive vice president and chief operating officer of Mariner Health Group, roles which laid the foundation for his move to Kindred Healthcare in 2002. He led Kindred as president and CEO for nearly fourteen years, and then joined Cressey and Company, a healthcare-focused private equity firm, before being named CEO of Myriad.
“A lot of people along the way will tell you that you can’t do something, but I learned to never let anybody tell me I couldn’t achieve.”
At each of his previous companies, Diaz worked to keep people the focus of healthcare. “I have been lucky to work with really wonderful people and mentors who have guided me,” he reflects. “Whether you are a lab tech or a senior vice president, everyone wants to know how their job matters.”
Diaz advises up-and-coming leaders to look for mentors, listen as much as they can, and look at every experience as an opportunity. “Be intentional about the opportunities given to you to learn and grow,” he says.
The CEO is hoping to give exactly those kinds of opportunities to young people in Louisville, Kentucky, through a program called SummerWorks. “We start early with kids to help train them on soft skills like filling out a résumé, making sure they know the importance of being on time for work, simple stuff like that,”
he explains. “We need to be intentional about internships and opportunities to learn.”
SummerWorks also helps kids overcome common obstacles to achieving their goals, including financial hardship. Looking back, this pillar of the program hits home for Diaz.
“My grandfather left Cuba with nothing. He hid my grandmother’s jewelry in the heels of his shoes, and when he came to the States, he hocked all of it to buy a little house in Miami that eight of us shared,” he says. “He was always the one who pushed me to read and become educated, and I worked through college to pay for my education.
“A lot of people along the way will tell you that you can’t do something,” the CEO continues, “but I learned to never let anybody tell me I couldn’t achieve.”
“We come to work to do good and do well. And at Myriad Genetics, we empower patients with genetic insights and help healthcare providers better detect, treat, and prevent disease.”
What is your secret to successful leadership?
The impressive executives featured here share theirs, and they are strategies that engage both the mind and the heart.
66. Naysa Aparicio-Hernandez, RJW Logistics Group 71. Ed Estrada, Premier Inc. 74. Marcela Manjarrez, Centene Corporation 79. Michael Trejo, Standard Printing Company 82. Josue Gonzalez, Teva Pharmaceuticals 84. Kristina Guillen, Anderson Holdings 88. Raymond Bilbao, Tivity Health 91. Rafael Cartagena, North American Partners in Anesthesia 94. Douglas Orellana, ManTech International Corporation 96. Dan Garcia, Meta 100. Dr. José Méndez-Andino, Owens Corning 104. Miriam Enriquez, ComcastNaysa Aparicio-Hernandez has overcome challenges and achieved a leadership role thanks to her positive attitude. She now uses that power to help young Latinas pursue a similar career path.
SOMETHING A COLLEGE PROFESSOR SAID TO Naysa Aparicio-Hernandez and her classmates has stuck with her throughout her career in human resources.
“How many of you picked up HR because you like people?” the professor asked, at which she eagerly raised her hand. “Let me tell you, you’re going to be very disappointed,” the professor said. “Because you may love people, but people are going to hate you.” The professor’s point, she says, is that people in HR are often tasked with giving bad news.
But Aparicio-Hernandez, who’s now the chief human resources officer at RJW Logistics Group, says she’s proven that professor wrong with her positive attitude, which has allowed her to overcome challenges in her life and play a vital role in the company she works for.
After graduating from Andrés Bello Catholic University in Venezuela with a bachelor’s degree in human and industrial relations, Aparicio-Hernandez worked for various industries including manufacturing and IT. She had worked her way up to being an HR manager when her husband got a job offer in Chicago. Suddenly, she says, she had to reinvent herself.
“Everything was different in this country: the language, the traditions, the culture, the food. So it was kind of a shock for me,” she says. “I had to learn the language and start over again.”
Starting over also meant working hard just to get an entry-level position in the US, despite her experience in leadership roles in Venezuela. She says a lot of people told her that she wouldn’t be able to get into the field
with her accent. Others advised her to pursue another career path. That wasn’t an option, she says. “I can’t see myself in another field, so what I did was I started to learn English, studied HR laws in the state, and went to classes for HR even though I already had a degree.”
She was able to move up the ranks and work her way back to leadership positions, an accomplishment she credits partly to the people who supported her along the way. But she also says she couldn’t have done any of it without staying positive.
“One of the things that helped me was to believe I could do more and more and not be my own enemy,” she says. “Find the positive in every situation. Even though it’s hard, it works wonders. The mind is positive, and you can work toward that.”
At RJW, which delivers logistics solutions that enable suppliers of consumer-packaged goods to improve their production and to optimize their supply chain processes, Aparicio-Hernandez directs the administration of the HR function, staffing goals, and strategies to support productive and profitable business operations. Her contributions have helped the compa ny grow from three hundred employees when she first started to a thousand employees today. Some of those contributions include developing new processes and embracing new technology to leverage company goals.
Among all the things she’s accomplished, she’s most proud of how she’s been able to change the perception of her department in the company. Sometimes, she says, HR departments are seen like the police department rather than a business partner.
“What I do with my team is empower them every day. I let them make their own decisions, and I make sure they learn as they go.”
Accurate Personnel is here to help.
“What I do with my team is empower them every day. I let them make their own decisions, and I make sure they learn as they go,” she says. It’s also important to her to show her staff that they can generate their own ideas.
“I’m available all the time for them. I don’t have any problems working together with them. No one is better than anyone.”
When that kind of culture develops within the department, those outside of it take notice, she explains. “The more that my team helps the other team, the better reception we get,” she adds. “The motivation my team has is absolutely contagious.”
One of Aparicio-Hernandez’s goals is to help more Latinas work in HR. Last year, she was selected to write a book about the challenges Latinas face and how to overcome them to reach executive positions. She says of the more than sixty million Latinas in the US, only 4 percent have executive positions in Fortune 100 companies. The book aims to close that gap by steering its proceeds toward scholarships for young women wanting to study HR. So far, there are seven scholarships secured.
“My heart is so full because of that. It’s our way to pay it forward and give back to the Latino community,” she says. She also serves as a mentor to young women who have HR career aspirations.
“I hope that my story and what I’m telling everybody is inspiring other women to keep going, and I hope that I’m motivating young people,” she says.
“Find the positive in every situation. Even though it’s hard, it works wonders.”APARICIO-HERNANDEZ RJW Logistics Group
ED ESTRADA IS ALL ABOUT INTEGRITY. As vice president of risk management and compliance at technology-driven healthcare improvement company Premier Inc., where he’s worked for nearly fifteen years, he’s had plenty of experiences that have shaped his beliefs.
“If you’re seeking a career in cybersecurity risk and compliance, in my experience, being technically strong, businessminded, and proactive are certainly helpful—but none of that matters if you don’t have integrity,” Estrada says. “Integrity is a non-negotiable character trait because how you do business is just as important as what you do. Integrity is not about good or bad; it’s about transparent consistency.”
Through Premier’s technology and services platform, the company helps its member healthcare organizations optimize performance using advanced analytics, consulting services, and workflow solutions—work that requires the company to process massive amounts of highly sensitive data accumulated by its members. This means, of course, that its cybersecurity and compliance department must meet the highest standards.
Ed Estrada VP of Risk Management & Compliance Premier Inc.For fifteen years, Ed Estrada has been building security systems and developing information security for Premier Inc.—not an easy task in healthcare
Estrada began his career with Premier in 2007 as an analyst, where he earned tactical experience and built a thorough understanding of the healthcare industry. He then went on to drive the vision, architecture, development, and delivery of critical flagship client and employee facing collaboration portals, tools, and services.
“With the knowledge I gained over the years, I was able to convert intangible assets into tangible, cost-effective, and profitable outcomes,” Estrada says. “That essentially means turning things that are normally taken for granted into not only efficient and effective tools but also profitable structures.”
Estrada’s aptitude for building secure systems did not go unnoticed. He quickly moved up through the ranks at Premier and was instructed to focus his efforts on evolving the company’s information security. Part of his job is to ensure Premier’s information security strategy, infrastructure, systems, solutions, and services are fashioned, maintained, and delivered with the utmost security, quality, innovation, and integrity. He also provides the board of directors with assurances that the operation solutions services would be able to deliver on business objectives without placing the organization into any jeopardy.
“Simply put, I establish, architect, own, and steward a program and framework that monitors Premier’s information security capabilities to ensure that any deviations are managed in a way that does not jeopardize Premier, achieves business goals, and operates in a way that meets laws, regulations, and contractual obligations,” Estrada explains.
Early on in his career, Estrada embraced the fact that security and compliance require an even greater level of responsibility in the healthcare field. “We never lose sight of the fact that people’s health is at stake. We can’t mail it in,” Estrada says. “While our
innovative technology, solutions, and services are always leading edge to improve the quality, safety and overall outcomes delivered to patients, we must make sure our systems, environment and everyone’s data are trusted and safe. Our discipline is making sure they are up to the highest standards possible.”
This is where risk management and compliance in healthcare differ from other
“If you’re seeking a career in cybersecurity risk and compliance, in my experience, being technically strong, business-minded, and proactive are certainly helpful— but none of that matters if you don’t have integrity.”
industries. In such a highly regulated field, the tolerance for shortcomings in discipline and transparency is extremely low.
“Some people, especially new people, may have the perception that compliance is something you do in anticipation of an audit,” Estrada says. “They may think ‘If this thing isn’t going to be audited, then why do I have to put the extra discipline in?’ I would say that is the wrong mindset for this industry. It’s vitally important to establish programs and standards in a way that unobtrusively infuses compliance into the everyday and cultivate partnerships with people who come from a different paradigm to make sure they understand the expectations of the industry that they now inhabit.”
Estrada is a leadership member of Premier’s council on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, which aims to be a community development pillar. The council creates opportunities to address inequities within healthcare, a goal they achieve by using their data to identify and take action against the social determinants of healthcare disparities. They focus on the root causes of those disparities, such as poverty, homelessness, mental health, and education.
Every year the council grants the Monroe E. Trout Premier Cares Award to a nonprofit that supports those who are excluded or underserved by the mainstream healthcare delivery system. The award includes a financial grant to contribute monetarily to the recipient’s efforts.
“The award is really something that we are extremely proud of. It’s an opportunity and a call to action, not only for me but for my colleagues and our industry,” Estrada explains. “Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed these issues throughout my whole life, and only recently have I had the opportunity to address them in a way that could actually be impactful.”
Premier Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC) is a healthcare improvement company uniting an alliance of approximately 4,400 U.S. hospitals and health systems and more than 225,000 other providers and organizations. Named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies® 14 years in a row, we are well-equipped to help health systems thrive.
Marcela Manjarrez leverages lessons learned in her traditional Mexican home and at the Federal Reserve to help Centene navigate COVID-19 and other challenges
Though the latter is better translated as “change point,” the sentiment of Kennedy’s speech has nonetheless inspired countless leaders, including Marcela Manjarrez, the executive vice president and chief communications officer of Centene Corporation.
Manjarrez prefers to focus on the opportunity in any given crisis, having garnered experience both during her time working for the Federal Reserve amid the economic recession of 2008, and today as she guides Centene through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even before the recession, Manjarrez was no stranger to adversity. She was born in Mexico City and has five siblings. Both her parents were extremely hardworking and while they did not have advanced degrees— Manjarrez’s mother had to drop out of school at a very young age to help care for her large family after the death of her own mother—“everything I learned about hard work and problem-solving, I learned from watching and listening to my parents,” Manjarrez says.
Her traditional Mexican household was full of education and culture. Manjarrez, who was twelve years younger than her young-
est sibling, spent afternoons and weekends attending operas, symphonies, and theaters with her mother. At home, they read encyclopedias and watched documentaries. Manjarrez was expected to attend weekly etiquette classes and watched her mom sell products to help the family make ends meet. Like her brothers and sisters, she had a special talent for numbers and finance.
The interest drew her to Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, where she studied actuarial science. Manjarrez intended to work in insurance, but the Mexican financial crisis of the 1990s helped her realize her true passion was in economics, which combines mathematics and human behavior. Manjarrez, who was already bilingual, transferred to the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) to finish her degree in economics, with a minor in statistics.
Once in the United States, the young immigrant continued to work hard while pursuing her education. She worked two jobs, participated in honors societies, and had a job offer before graduation.
The offer came from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Manjarrez started in an
entry-level position and was quickly promoted to senior economic research analyst. In the role, she managed large data sets for top economists and wrote articles on monetary policy.
Manjarrez left the Fed to complete an master’s in economics but was invited back to serve as special research assistant to the president and later became a VP in the public affairs department. She was navigating the new job duties and developing new skills when Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed. Suddenly, the Federal Reserve was in the national spotlight and Manjarrez was part of the team shaping external communications on these developments.
As stakeholders became more interested in the Fed’s messaging, Manjarrez relied on her master’s degree in economics and a decade of industry experience to translate between PhD specialists and the public. When the financial crisis subsided, she built a new public relations team to leverage the increased interest in the federal and the financial system.
“Our reengineered communications team included individuals with economics and banking—not only public relations
“crisis” is composed of characters that represent danger and opportunity.
backgrounds—who could help explain concepts in terms the general public and financial media could understand,” she explains. “Being able to leverage people in communications with subject-matter expertise strengthened the ability of the Federal Reserve Bank to communicate monetary policy.”
She also modernized the communications channels. Instead of publishing research papers exclusively, the St. Louis Fed—under Manjarrez’s leadership—launched a blog and leveraged official Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts to make its message clear, engaging, and accessible. Part of these efforts included the Economy Museum, which is open to the public.
Several leaders, including those at Centene, noticed Manjarrez’s success. She was hired in 2015 to manage all strategic communications and elevate the visibility of the growing company that provides healthcare to vulnerable populations. Soon after she accepted the job, Centene announced a multibillion-dollar acquisition that would double the company’s size and become the fourth-largest player in its industry.
inclusive
Our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion informs the shape and content of the programs that we have in place to serve our membership and their communities, including Centene’s support of Healthy Americas Foundation’s Hispanic Family Equity Fund, where the Centene Charitable Foundation has pledged to match up to $1 million in corporate contributions.
Of our nearly 75,900 employees
75% of our employees are women
49% of our employees identify as a person of color
Our state based health plans serve 1 in 15 individuals across the U.S.
27% of our membership identify as Hispanic.
of our employees self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. 16%
“We want to continue to build our diverse, inclusive, and mission-driven culture and ensure we keep our members and employees at the center of what we do. We cannot lose the human aspect.”
At Centene, we’re committed to a truly
company culture.
Centene has continued its growth trajectory over the past eight years. After three additional acquisitions, the company now has nearly seventy-six thousand employees and ranks twenty-four on the Fortune 500 list. Manjarrez and her team are focused on telling Centene’s story. “We want to continue to build our diverse, inclusive, and mission-driven culture and ensure we keep our members and employees at the center of what we do. We cannot lose the human aspect,” she says. “We’re helping members, employees, and the public improve the health of the communities one person at a time.”
Since Centene is branded regionally in each state, Manjarrez and her hand-picked team work with local leaders to craft niche messages to best reach different populations and communities across the country. When COVID-19 hit, her teams worked overtime to help these groups get easy access to the information that matters most. They leveraged multiple communications channels to share rapidly evolving information and created an online resource center to keep the public informed quickly and efficiently.
Under Manjarrez’s leadership, the Centene Communications team also worked to keep employees across the globe connected. “This was a major culture shift for Centene,” she explains. “We were quickly adapting and evolving our best practices to work across exclusively digitized channels with new formats like virtual meetings, ensuring that we were still driving authentic and relevant messages across the organization.”
Manjarrez, who has had the support of many sponsors and mentors over the years, is committed to giving back and elevating others. She encourages young professionals to be prepared, intentional, and flexible. She recently had the chance to speak directly to several hundred graduates as University of Missouri-St. Louis’s commencement speaker.
Manjarrez reminded the young people to define their own future through a lifetime of continuous learning. She closed the speech with words from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt: “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.”
“Everything I learned about hard work and problem-solving, I learned from watching my parents.”
Arizona native Michael Trejo returned to his hometown to turn a local company into a minority-owned enterprise capable of providing jobs, unlocking opportunity, and helping the entire community thrive
HE’S A HARVARD GRAD, AN INVESTMENT banker, a successful entrepreneur, and a respected leader—but at his core, Michael Trejo is an Arizonan. His grandfather was an elected official in Phoenix and had several children who formed deep roots in the state. Although Trejo left to gain business experience, he’s returned to grow an established company and contribute to the place his family has called home for seven generations.
Trejo traces his roots to ancestors who came to Arizona from Mexico. They settled in Phoenix, lived in the barrios, and became part of the local fabric. Trejo watched members of his extended family work various jobs and start meaningful careers. He was always good with numbers and remembers memorizing baseball stats from the local newspaper as a child. It was a budding talent the adults in his large family encouraged. When Trejo turned eleven years old in 1998, his grandparents
gave him $300 and his parents gave him a book outlining the top one hundred stocks to own. Trejo bought two shares of a paint company and two shares of Oracle. Soon, his investment doubled. Before long, it turned into $1,800.
A career in finance seemed like a foregone conclusion, but Trejo didn’t have any role models he could turn to. He worked as a stock boy at a grocery store and refused to use his car’s air conditioner so he could save money to buy the Wall Street Journal. He landed a full scholarship to Arizona State University (ASU), which nearly was taken away from him after poor focus affected his grades. “Nobody I knew was in finance, and I needed a mentor to show me the way,” he explains. Trejo joined ASU’s Hispanic Business Students’ Association and met Gary Trujillo. Trujillo, who had founded an investment firm and already logged decades as an
entrepreneur, founded an education-focused nonprofit with his wife Melissa—the Be a Leader Foundation—and he also worked to empower Latino students. He became the mentor Trejo was looking for.
The support set Trejo on a new path. He improved his grades, honed his writing skills, and prepared for a career on Wall Street. Trujillo helped Trejo secure an internship that he eventually parlayed into an entry-level position with Merrill Lynch.
The next months and years were a flurry of activity. A month after he received the job offer from Merrill Lynch, he got another important piece of mail—an acceptance letter from Harvard Business School. Soon after, Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch. Then in 2011, after he had begun his studies, he was accepted into Bank of America’s diversity fellowship program. He completed his MBA and MPP in Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts, and returned to Bank of America, where he stayed for eight years.
Trejo was based in New York City and traveling the world to complete billion-dollar transactions for top utilities clients. Although he was “living the dream,” he missed Arizona. “I always planned to leave the state for ten years to gain experience that I could bring back to my community,” he says. “It was time to come home.” Trejo picked up the phone and called his mentor. Together, they hatched a plan and orchestrated Trejo’s homecoming.
The duo started looking for a local firm they could accelerate by making it into a minority-owned business. They found a match in Standard Printing Company (SPC). The commercial trade printer started printing business forms in 1952. When Trujillo’s Southwest Harvard Group Ventures acquired SPC last year, the new leaders kept the company’s highly effective management team
“Things are more relational here, and I like reintroducing myself to the people and places that have been instrumental in my family’s story.”
in place and added Trejo as president and CEO to lead business development and new customer acquisition.
Trejo is navigating the transition from Wall Street banker to small business owner well. “Things are more relational here, and I like reintroducing myself to the people and places that have been instrumental in my family’s story,” he says. He’s looking to add capacity and support Standard Printing’s growth as they produce forms and documents for large corporate and municipal clients. SPC’s new status as a minority-owned business is opening doors as Trejo and Trujillo help customers achieve their supplier diversity goals.
Standard Printing also has new initiatives in place to address sustainability and environmental impact. Trejo, who covered clean technology and renewables at Bank of America, is taking steps to lower his new company’s impact. SPC uses soy-based ink and ensures all waste is collected for recycling.
But perhaps the most meaningful steps are the ones Trejo and his team are taking to reinvest in the local community. Employees are encouraged to engage local nonprofits, and SPC contributes to organizations like the Boys & Girls Clubs of Phoenix. Trejo is now a formal part of the Be a Leader Foundation, which provides leadership development and college access programs for more than fourteen thousand students per year.
“It has been a pleasure to work with Michael as a business partner,” says Christine Nowaczyk, senior vice president of corporate banking at BOK Financial. “Michael’s commitment to our community and his support of students through the Be a Leader Foundation will ensure Arizona continues to be a place we are all proud to call home.”
Standard Printing operates in an industrial Hispanic neighborhood, and Trejo is proud to be helping his hometown thrive. “We’re right where we want to be as a business,” he says. “We’re growing, and we want people and communities to grow along with us.”
Proud to support Executive Leader Michael Trejo.
Drawing on lessons learned from his father, Josue Gonzalez focuses on bringing tenacity and added value to his role at Teva Pharmaceuticals
lessons from his dad, who emigrated from Cuba right before the Cuban Revolution in 1959. One of the most important lessons centers on the idea of added value.
“My dad owned a business in Cuba, and he had to leave it behind: he came to this country making about twenty-five cents an hour,” explains Gonzalez, who was born and raised in New Jersey. “He worked hard and focused on education, always telling me to study and that working hard and offering value to someone would always be welcomed.”
Now that Gonzalez has advanced in his own career, he has passed that lesson on to his son. “I always mention that any purpose that does not add any value will not make any difference towards achieving a goal or target,” he says. “You have to stay up with the trends because at the speed that things are changing, you can be outdated in no time. You must be able to quickly understand the situation at hand and either prevent a crisis or implement
a contingency plan immediately in order to minimize any impact.”
Heeding his father’s advice, Gonzalez graduated from the New Jersey Institute of Technology as an industrial engineer and later earned his MBA from Nova Southeastern University. He began his career in a supply chain role through a co-op program with multinational healthcare company F. Hoffmann-La Roche. Gonzalez spent five years there, learning the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical supply chain business.
“I was always in operations, and tended to be geared toward medical and pharmaceutical,” he explains. “There’s something about the industry that’s self-gratifying; you’re helping people and there’s no room for error, especially when you’re launching a new product.”
Determined to keep learning, growing, and finding more ways to add value, Gonzalez moved to Boston Scientific to improve his understanding of the manufacturing side of the industry. In 2007, he moved to Teva
Pharmaceuticals, a global pharmaceutical leader that specializes in generic medicines and biopharmaceuticals.
Gonzalez currently serves as Teva’s senior director and head of supply chain for Latin America. He’s charged with the end-to-end supply chain responsibilities for Latin America (from the purchasing of raw material to their arrival at the distribution center), as well as for a couple of manufacturing plants in Europe and Indonesia.
“On the Latin America end, it’s about understanding the unique laws and regulations around importing products and manufacturing internally, which differ from country to country, so our customers receive complete orders on time,” Gonzalez says. “Doing this successfully is all about ensuring standardized supply chain practices and well-defined communication channels between suppliers.”
In leading a team of supply chain professionals, one important distinction he makes about his role is the difference between being a functional manager and people leader. He tries not to micromanage his team, instead helping them develop, teaching them, and exposing them to opportunities that will stretch their capabilities, enabling them to grow and succeed.
“I always tell my team, ‘If you don’t think you’re adding value, take a step back, take a deep breath, and let me know how I can help,’” he explains. “One of the most important activities I’ve accomplished here was to develop a well-rounded team that executes according to strategy. You can’t do it on your own.”
Tenacity is another trait that Gonzalez emphasizes while discussing his career and work philosophy.
“In order to have tenacity, I think you need to understand where you came from,” he reflects. “You have to stay hungry. I did not have the best toys in the world, I wore my cousins’ hand-me-down clothes, and I remember my dad working twelve hours a day Monday through Friday and eight hours
Gonzalez Directorby closed borders and quarantines. “Here we are, a pharmaceutical company, and we needed to get product to our customers,” Gonzalez recalls. “The company needed to react quickly because we needed to get the job done. It was a lot of long, stressful nights. It’s a different ballgame when people aren’t getting their meds.”
Now that most of the pandemic-related challenges have been resolved, Gonzalez is working to get back to as close to pre-COVID operations as possible. He realizes, though, that things will probably never be quite the same again.
on Saturday. I had to pay my college loans. Those experiences pushed and fueled me.”
Those lessons came in handy in 2020 when the pandemic hit: Teva had to pivot quickly to solve the logistical problems caused
“This is a learning experience, and something else I teach my son [is that] we have to stay current and focus on value and adjust accordingly,” he says. “There’s a societal transformation going on, and we’re not sure yet what normal is going to look like. But the most important thing is to continue to deliver wherever you can.”
“You have to stay up with the trends because at the speed that things are changing, you can be outdated in no time. You must always find ways to bring value to what you do.”
BY ZACH BALIVA
BY THE TIME KRISTINA GUILLEN WAS in the fifth grade, she had lived in Kansas, Arizona, Mississippi, Texas, and even Panama, where she remembers being dazzled by the colors, smells, and action at the local open-air market. While many other Army families dreaded the frequent moves that often accompany military service, Guillen’s parents encouraged her to enjoy the opportunity to meet new people, see new places, and make special memories.
The era birthed in her a passion for diversity and gave her the ability to appreciate the unique contribution each individual person can make. She’s carried that passion into her work as a veteran HR and talent executive at some of the world’s top companies.
Now, Guillen is Anderson Holdings’ chief human resources officer. She joined the private, family-owned, diversified holding company in late 2020 to establish a new people-first focus designed to drive long-term growth and take Anderson Holdings to new heights. To do so, Guillen is leveraging the lessons she’s learned along the way at places like Merck, Coca-Cola, and the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.
A childhood split between more than five cities made Guillen naturally curious and open to new things. She studied psychology at Rice University and exited into a general management and leadership program at McMaster-Carr Supply Company. As she rotated through operations, management,
Kristina Guillen CHRO Anderson Holdings
and other business areas, Guillen’s eyes were opened to the importance of connecting the right people to the right work. A growing interest in human resources took her to Cornell’s strategic human resources management program at the ILR School.
Upon earning her master’s degree, Guillen started at Merck and partnered closely with business leaders to create effective talent management strategies for thousands of employees at the leading pharmaceutical company. As Guillen advanced in her career, she noticed an opportunity to diversify teams. “I didn’t see many Latina or Latino leaders I could emulate,” she says. “The lack of representation motivated me to be one of the people who would ultimately change the conversation for women and people of color.”
With these ideas in her mind, Guillen took a position at Coca-Cola, where she would have the chance to step more firmly into places of leadership and influence. After three years in talent management and HR business partner roles, leaders tapped Guillen for a bigger role. She led talent management and leadership development for a North American operating group composed of seventy thousand employees, and then took on a second role providing HR leadership to a regional sales group with eight thousand employees and over $5 billion in annual revenue.
Then, Guillen provided similar talent management support for a global operating group with sixty thousand associates. In that position, she developed key talent strategies around management, engagement, diversity, and culture and worked to unite multiple operating organizations with one talent strategy.
In 2017, Guillen moved to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to lead all aspects of HR for the
business, which had 350 locations globally and five thousand employees on the retail side, and 1,200 locations and more than twenty thousand employees in its franchise system. By that point in her career, Guillen had been in the beverage space for more than a decade and still wasn’t satisfied with the number of opportunities for women and people of color.
While formal development and mentoring programs can be effective, the HR leader tried to identify internal opportunities for women and made her desire to provide advice and informal mentoring and coaching well-known. She also relied on a strong personal network of friends and advisors to keep her grounded.
“It can be very lonely when you get to the top seat because your internal peer group shrinks,” she says. “Women who aspire to the highest levels of leadership need to build a personal board of directors who will advise them, challenge them, and keep them honest.”
These are the lessons that now guide Guillen at Anderson Holdings. The business, which was started by entrepreneur John Anderson, has holdings in twenty-five subsidiaries including commercial real estate, manufacturing companies, automobile dealerships, and beverage distributors. Guillen came to the organization because she saw the unique opportunity to apply what she’s learned about HR and diversity to take the company to the next level.
“Anderson Holdings has many different types of businesses and activities, but the common thread is people. We can drive growth through HR and make a big impact,” she explains.
Guillen is laying the foundation to drive that growth by emphasizing the employee
“A people-first HR model is more important than ever before because it creates the right corporate culture that can help us tackle today’s unique business issues head-on.”
experience and focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion as a pivotal part of that experience. She’s working with Anderson Holdings’ chief diversity officer to attract, hire, develop, and retain a more diverse workforce that reflects the markets the company serves.
The business recently launched its first employee resource group, Women at Anderson, through which female associates can “engage, elevate, and connect with one another.” Additionally, Guillen has partnered with Skillsoft to provide diversity training to the entire Anderson Holdings team over the next nine months.
As these new strategies come together, Guillen is thinking about how to help Anderson Holdings thrive in the hypercompetitive, post-pandemic world. “A people-first HR model is more important than ever before because it creates the right corporate culture that can help us tackle today’s unique business issues head-on,” she says.
Challenges related to supply chain and labor shortages threaten to disrupt momentum. But Guillen is setting the tone, helping leaders be people-focused, and embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion. In doing so, she’s creating the culture that will take Anderson Holdings where it wants to go— and beyond.
Together we unlock potential. People are an organization’s greatest asset, and that makes it an honor to partner with forward-thinking leaders who want to build exceptional employee experiences like Kristina Guillen.
We understand that when our people thrive, our business thrives. Our teams foster a culture in which individual voices are lifted, heard, and empowered. It drives us, and our decisions, everyday.
WHEN RAYMOND BILBAO WAS JUST five years old, his family left their home in the Philippines to care for a sick relative in San Francisco. Bilbao observed as his father, a retired professional soccer player and financial analyst, struggled to make the transition, learn English, and reinvent himself in a new land. Eventually, his father landed a new job in the United States: he spent years traveling the country, training employees, and setting up displays for a PPG, a national paint company. Watching his father’s story unfold showed Bilbao how far the ability to learn something new can take a person.
It was a lesson he would carry with him through adolescence and into his career. Many years later, Bilbao found himself
studying political science at Texas Christian University. He was an athlete like his father, but unfortunately his days on the football field were cut short by injury.
Still, Bilbao persisted and excelled in his studies. He was on the dean’s honor list and remembers being in an introductory business law class of 150 students when the teacher vowed to award just two As. “I knew that I would have to work hard and stay determined to learn new things if I wanted to succeed,” he says. Bilbao and his roommate were the only two students to receive top grades that semester.
The success impressed Bilbao’s college girlfriend (and current wife) so much that she insisted he take the LSAT. When she persisted, he relented and ended up scoring
high and enrolling at St. Mary’s University School of Law.
That set Bilbao on a new path as he continued learning and developing skills that brought new opportunities. Following graduation from St. Mary’s, Bilbao started his career as an associate at a small, fullservice law firm in Fort Worth, Texas, where he progressed quickly, defending doctors, nurses, and hospitals in high-dollar medical malpractice cases. And as Bilbao launched his legal career, he developed a reputation as a daring and competent advocate.
Unfortunately, after just two years, Bilbao’s firm dissolved, and the lawyer was forced to look for a job in a bad economy. He found a position at a small boutique office where he learned broad-ranging skills alongside two other lawyers. Months later, an injury forced a partner out, and thirty months after graduating from law school, Bilbao inherited a complex caseload.
Those nuanced legal matters prepared him to go in-house, and when a recruiter called with a position at a telecommunications company, Bilbao accepted. He was soon prosecuting litigation against a former CEO who had breached a noncompete clause. It was an opportunity for the young lawyer to demonstrate his skills by trying a case in federal court. “I was in tough circumstances very early in my career,” Bilbao says. “I had to be bold and daring because I had no other choice.” After three days of trial, Bilbao secured a favorable settlement for the company and was subsequently promoted to general counsel.
It was the start of a trend of success for Bilbao, one that would continue as he worked on cases for a variety of companies over the next several years. He mastered new and emerging technologies to help guide
GiftCards.com, ServiceMaster, and Terminix through complex marketing, commercial contract, and intellectual property issues, and managed the international and domestic restructuring of Gibson Brands in twenty-two countries. Bilbao racked up big wins and high-dollar settlements in hotly contested cases and arbitrations. He faced tough judges, went toe-to-toe with skilled prosecutors, forced settlements, and took down patent trolls.
Raymond Bilbao Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary Tivity HealthIn 2018, the veteran attorney joined Tivity Health as deputy general counsel. Now, as chief legal officer and corporate secretary, he has responsibility for all legal matters, enterprise risk management, information security, and data privacy including M&A, corporate governance, securities disclosure, litigation, contracts, intellectual property, enterprise insurance program, regulatory compliance, and all related matters for the company.
As he’s done many times in his career, Bilbao learned an entirely new area of the law in order to thrive at Tivity. This time, he became an expert on Medicare and HIPAA as the company acts as a business associate to more than seventy Medicare Advantage plans. “A good in-house lawyer has to understand the business to provide sound legal advice,” he says. “Great lawyers go deeper in their knowledge to help guide strategy.”
Tivity operates SilverSneakers, a famous fitness program that promotes wellness in the senior community for
Medicare Advantage members. Plan members get access to SilverSneakers benefits at no additional cost to their Medicare Advantage premium at more than twenty-two thousand locations, and Bilbao and his legal team are putting the agreements and resources in place to support the company’s digital engagement growth strategy.
The CLO and his legal, information security, and data privacy/compliance teams are also supporting Tivity in its effort to pivot to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to Bilbao, the company continues to grow its virtual offerings for SilverSneakers members, recently adding social engagement and mental enrichment while expanding its in-person nationwide gym network. These steps bring new online security, data, and privacy considerations, but Bilbao is unfazed by the new challenges. “Every employer, position, year, and project means you have to handle something you haven’t seen before,” he says. “And I love learning new things.”
Fenwick & West LLP: “Ray is extremely supportive, both of his internal and external legal teams, and a great partner with whom to collaborate. He creates a collegial atmosphere where everyone is excited to work together and solve problems that lead to the best outcomes for the company. He is a true leader.”
–Eric Ball, Trademark Litigation Partner
“I was in tough circumstances very early in my career. I had to be bold and daring because I had no other choice.”
Supportive leader, Exceptional partner.
THINK OF THE MOST COMPLEX AND STRESSFUL MOMENTS IN A hospital or emergency room—procedures such as an organ transplant, coronary artery bypass surgery, emergency C-section, or mechanical thrombectomy. Anesthesiologists play a critical role in all these events, administering powerful drugs in high-pressure situations. The patient’s life is often quite literally in their hands.
Hospitals, surgical centers, and other medical facilities simply must have high-quality anesthesiologists—specialists who they can turn to for safe, effective, and consistent care. North American Partners in Anesthesia (NAPA) provides those highly skilled medical professionals to more than five hundred healthcare facilities around the country.
Rafael Cartagena is NAPA’s chief operating officer. He coordinates clinical operations and works to ensure that all of NAPA’s partners have the tools and resources they need to be safe and successful. “We want to attract, develop, and promote the very best people so we can continue to deliver unmatched service to the millions of patients our partners serve every day,” he explains.
A tragic event at an early age led to Cartagena’s lifelong commitment to medicine. He was playing a pickup game of football when a friend suffered an asthma attack. Although Cartagena and his friends called 911 and attempted to render aid, they lacked adequate knowledge and couldn’t find anyone nearby to assist. His friend passed away before the ambulance arrived. Cartagena made a promise to himself—he would pursue medicine and positively impact the health and wellbeing of others.
That motivation took the young student to Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied genetics before continuing to medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. He remained in Philadelphia for a residency in anesthesiology and then accepted a faculty appointment as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, where he had the chance to train and influence future medical residents.
After nearly two years, Cartagena left academia for private practice in Virginia. He worked as an anesthesiologist, became part owner of Total Anesthesia, and partnered with hospitals to provide services throughout the Richmond area.
As Cartagena built and grew his businesses, he learned what it meant to be responsible for the livelihoods of his employees and their families. “We are only as good as our people on our team. What matters is the care we provide, and that care is driven by our people,” he says. That realization led Cartagena to start investing even more in his employees.
In the face of a changing healthcare industry, Cartagena and his partners realized that they could provide more job security and professional opportunities for their staff by joining a larger entity. NAPA emerged as the right fit, and in 2014 they acquired Total Anesthesia.
As NAPA’s chief operating officer, Cartagena draws upon all parts of his unique
“The only things proprietary in anesthesiology are the leaders and the people who create differentiation in the industry.”
Rafael Cartagena COO
North American Partners in Anesthesia
career path and leverages his operational, clinical, and training experience to help the business flourish. “I still get to train younger professionals, help run a business, practice medicine, and manage employees,” he says. “And we’re doing it all so we can serve the communities we are in.”
A dedication to human resources and professional development continues to set Cartagena and NAPA apart. “The only things proprietary in anesthesiology are the leaders and the people who create differentiation in the industry,” he notes.
NAPA functions with regional teams, and its executive leaders work to identify high-potential employees who are matched with mentors and opportunities for personal and professional growth. The organization is also launching a new program that will support nurses from underrepresented backgrounds in their applications to nurse anesthetist programs.
Cartagena’s approach is taking NAPA to new heights. The organization announced many new endeavors in 2021, including one with Sheppard Pratt’s Baltimore/Washington Campus. Cartagena now has clinicians on-site to provide anesthesia services for electroconvulsive therapy.
NAPA has a long-established relationship with Sheppard Pratt, whose Chief Operating Officer Greg Gattman says the hospital broadened its collaboration based on shared values. It’s validation that Cartagena’s approach is working. “We’ve built a core asset of great people working well together to deliver great care,” he says. “And that will take us far.”
With more than five thousand clinicians nationwide, NAPA is now the largest single-specialty anesthesia and perioperative management company in the United States. And a reputation for safe, quality, and compassionate care will help NAPA stay on top.
MANTECH WORKS DIRECTLY WITH US security to ensure that national defense systems are equipped with technology that will best assist key leaders in high-pressure moments. Dr. Douglas Orellana, who works as vice president of intelligent systems engineering within ManTech’s Innovation and Capabilities Office, keeps this mission close to his heart.
Orellana grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right in between MIT and Harvard. Within this cradle of academic and technological research, Orellana discovered a passion for engineering and decided to embark on a journey that would mark him as an innovator respected by academics and industry leaders alike.
“I knew early on that I would be an engineer,” Orellana reflects. “My middle school had a partnership with Draper Labs and MIT, and that kind of exposure spurred me to become an engineer. As an eighth grader, I got to tour around those labs, and the stuff that they were doing was really interesting to me. So from that point on, I knew I wanted to be an engineer.”
Orellana soon enrolled at Johns Hopkins as an electrical engineering student. During his undergrad years, he spent two summers as an intern at BAE Systems. The experience
deeply influenced him, igniting his enthusiasm for defense technology.
“The mission and motto of BAE systems was ‘Protecting those who protect us,’ and that always hit home, especially with some of my family members being in the armed forces,” Orellana says. “Since then, I’ve worked at different companies, in different roles and different aspects of defense—but that line has always stuck with me.”
Upon graduation, Orellana began working at Northrop Grumman, where he cut his teeth as an electronics engineer. There, he discovered that furthering his education could make him even more of an asset to the company, helping him gain new expertise from an environment that prioritized research. He enrolled in a system engineering master’s program at his alma mater while he moved up the ranks at Northrop.
In the course of his eleven years with the company, Orellana worked his way up to the role of manager of system architecture and analysis. “I really grew up as an engineer at Northrop,” he says. “In particular, the first five years gave me the mindset of pushing forward, not just for the company but for the practice as well.”
“We want to help them make the right decisions with the right information at the right time.
Seconds can be the difference between life or death on the battlefield.”
Two years after completing his master’s, Orellana went back to school again, this time in pursuit of a PhD in astronautics and systems architecting and engineering at the University of Southern California. After completing his degree, Orellana spent a couple years at SAIC before joining ManTech in September 2020.
As Orellana explains, he joined ManTech to help the organization pivot away from system engineering technical advisory work toward a role where they could become a larger systems
Douglas Orellana VP of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Innovation & Capabilities Office ManTech International Corporation
integrator. “Part of my role is to help our business development organization help shape opportunities that are coming in the future with the technology that I bring,” Orellana explains. “It’s all part of helping ManTech embrace digital transformation for engineering.”
ManTech’s overall mission can be summed up in its mantra: “Bringing digital to the mission.” In other words, Orellana says, the company seeks to prepare warfighters with technology that can speed up their decision-making. “We want to help them make the right decisions with the right information at the right time,” the VP says. “Seconds can be the difference between life or death on the battlefield.”
Orellana’s primary focus is on his day-today work at ManTech, but he also manages to keep a toe in academia by contributing to academic papers. This connection allows him to facilitate partnerships with ManTech and major academic bodies, like MIT and the University of Detroit–Mercy.
Orellana encourages everyone to seek out educational opportunities, whether they’re a teenager or an experienced professional. He attributes this passion to his parents, who immigrated to the US from El Salvador and encouraged him to pursue higher education. “I always told my parents the bachelor’s degree was for them and all the advanced education I got was for me,” Orellana jokes. Then, on a more serious note, he adds, “Understanding the journey that my parents took to get to this country . . . that’s been the biggest motivation for me to move forward in my career and my studies.”
Meta’s Dan Garcia proves the power of forging an unconventional path in both construction management and law
BY LUCY CAVANAGH
“MY JOURNEY HAS NOT BEEN A VERY traditional one,” says Dan Garcia, associate general counsel of design and construction at Meta. “Hopefully my story can be encouraging to those who might be taking a nontraditional path on their education and professional journey.”
Reflecting on his career so far, Garcia recounts the unexpected turns, blessings in disguise, and unconventional moves that got him to where he is today.
Garcia grew up moving around different suburbs in Southern California, Arizona,
Texas, and Mexico, where he was exposed to a variety of people and cultures across the different socioeconomic classes. He cultivated a love of math and science and chose to study civil engineering at University of California Berkeley before eventually switching to mechanical engineering.
Though he was advised not to work in the first years of the rigorous program, Garcia found himself in a tough spot financially and began working multiple part-time jobs as he pursued his degree. He landed a job at a construction management consulting firm
called Cooper Pugeda Management that rolled into a summer internship. When they offered him a full-time position the following year, he decided to pause his formal education and embrace the opportunity to start building his career.
Garcia received incredible training at the company through exciting projects at the San Francisco airport and a historic renovation and expansion of the City of Berkeley’s downtown library, among a number of other large public facility projects. However, he eventually hit the ceiling of advancement without a degree. “It was a catch22 situation where I couldn’t progress with my career— they wanted me to work full time as a construction manager but then also somehow get my degree,” Garcia explains. “It was just completely unfeasible at the time.”
The owner of Critical Solutions, whom Garcia had impressed through a joint venture project, offered him a far more favorable alternative: go back to school while working part-time around his class schedule at the same salary he was currently making.
After earning his degree, Garcia stayed at Critical Solutions for a few more years. Soon, another passion came to the forefront: law. Garcia’s mentor in high school ran his own patent law practice and inspired in him a curiosity about law. Garcia decided to go to law school and scratch that curious itch.
Garcia attended Santa Clara University for law school and, while he originally thought he would try his
hand at patent law, he quickly discovered that his talents and interests were best suited for construction law.
During his second summer of law school, Garcia earned a clerkship at Severson & Werson that led him to a part-time role during his final year of school that supported him while he studied for the bar exam. He went on to become an associate before moving on to other experiences at law firms like Hanson Bridgett and Perkins Coie.
His expertise in construction management proved to be a major asset. “It’s really tough for construction lawyers that don’t have some sort of engineering or construction background. It’s a pretty steep learning curve,” Garcia explains. “I was able to quickly grasp the issues. Since I was able to speak the language, I knew how to shift the experts’ attention to areas that were worth focusing on.”
The intersection of Garcia’s two passions can be found in the analysis and problem-solving nature of both law and construction management. Through his work, he exercises both sides of his knowledge to get down to the bottom of the issues that arise in contracts and during performance of the work.
“I found that the analysis we do is almost like being a detective. We ask, What’s the real issue here? What do the drawings and specs really say? What’s reasonable for the contractor to expect or assume in this situation?” Garcia says. “It’s a bit of a tricky business because, for
“Others’ experience might not match exactly to mine. I have learned that challenges that may appear to be setbacks could lead to something even better.”
example, in construction dispute resolution, there is a heavy reliance on the opinions of design professionals involved in the project, and understandably design professionals don’t like to admit that there’s something wrong with their work product.
“My experience in construction management and litigation has given me the tools I need to become an effective construction contract specialist,” he continues, “coming up with drafting solutions to address the reasonable concerns of both parties is deeply satisfying to me.”
Garcia was recruited to work as associate general counsel on Meta’s design and construction team in 2018. He had turned down in-house positions before, but in addition to the big-name appeal of the company, Garcia was convinced to take the job because of the varied and collaborative nature of the work.
“The work is much more cooperative and enjoyable than litigation,” Garcia explains. “In litigation, you’re basically at war with the other side. I prefer to be doing something more collaborative and building something better than what had been done before.”
Garcia emphasizes that his career journey, while perhaps not typical, is also not so unique. His advice for young people who find themselves in similar situations is to not get discouraged when their plans are thrown for a loop.
“This is not the job I dreamed I would have when I was six years old,” Garcia says. “Others’ experience might not match exactly to mine. I have learned that challenges that may appear to be setbacks, and unexpected opportunities could lead to something even better.”
As a law firm, Hanson Bridgett LLP recognizes that our investment in promoting justice, racial equity, and diversity is more important than ever before. Continued success means hiring, promoting, and mentoring diverse leadership teams, and celebrating the success of diverse attorneys even when they move on from our firm. Congratulations to our former colleague, Dan Garcia!
As a law firm, we are committed to promoting racial equity and social justice in the communities where we live and work.
our initiatives, contact
Dr. José Méndez-Andino has decades of experience creating new consumer products. At Owens Corning, he’s breaking free from the traditional process and finding new levels of success by emphasizing diversity, inclusion, and sustainability.
BY ZACH BALIVAOf course, driving innovation for a leading global building and industrial materials manufacturer is a key part of his job, but the veteran leader is also on a mission to create a more sustainable society.
It’s an ambitious mission, but one for which Méndez-Andino is uniquely qualified. After a friend’s winning high school science fair project inspired him to follow his passion for science and engineering, he earned a degree in industrial chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico. Méndez-Andino then came to the US mainland, where he completed a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry at the Ohio State University and postdoctoral studies in natural product synthesis at the University of Pennsylvania.
Upon leaving UPenn, Méndez-Andino spent a decade at Procter & Gamble, using his advanced technical skills and training to formulate and improve products for iconic brands like Vicks and Bounty Paper Towels. But as the young scientist worked within the robust and established consumer-driven research and development (R&D) framework, he noticed something. To do his job most effectively, he needed more than scientific knowledge—he needed a deep under-
standing of people and behaviors. That epiphany sent him to the University of North Texas, where he earned a master’s degree in applied anthropology.
Industrial chemistry and anthropology may sound like a strange combination, but Méndez-Andino says the disciplines fit together perfectly. “Science alone doesn’t help us create the best products in the consumer space,” he explains. “Adding the study of human behavior helps us innovate on a whole new level.”
Because of his understanding of business anthropology, Méndez-Andino notes, he is better prepared to create environments in which his R&D teams can thrive. He joined Owens Corning in the building materials R&D team in 2012, and in 2021 was named executive vice president and chief research and development officer.
He has been instrumental in creating a new product pipeline to support the company’s iconic pink fiberglass insulation and other products. Expertise in natural and social sciences has helped him at every step of that journey. “I believe it’s essential to understand not only the chemistry and the materials but also the people that design, manufacture, install, and purchase our products,” he says.
Méndez-Andino also uses that knowledge to make important adjustments to the materials, processes, and workspaces at Owens Corning. When these measures come together, he explains, the result is better products for the consumer.
Recently, the company released its new FOAMULAR NGX insulation. The advanced product developed by the R&D team Méndez-Andino leads is designed to replace and outperform a legacy product known as FOAMULAR XPS. The new generation of foam insulation delivers a 90 percent reduction in blowing agent global warming potential, eliminates an ozone depleting chemical known as HFC 134a, and increases energy efficiency.
As the CR&DO explains, Owens Corning scientists research and choose new materials as they collaborate with process and product engineers, who in turn create and test new product formulations, ensuring compatibility and safety at each step. Then, other teams check and test product performance as they create prototypes that are evaluated, modified, and optimized before a final version is packaged and marketed for consumer use. The
Dr. José MéndezAndino leads research and development at Owens Corning, but he’s not just there to make better fiberglass composites, insulation, and roofing products.
innovation journey typically takes many years to complete.
Méndez-Andino points out that R&D work must be designed to solve the most important challenges of the future. For this reason, his team draws on the company’s ambitious long-term sustainability goals to inspire Owens Corning’s research pipeline today. And as Méndez-Andino demonstrates just what is possible in terms of developing more environmentally friendly products, he hopes he can encourage competitors and other manufacturers to take similar steps. “The world has to address sustainability and climate change,” he stresses, “and companies have a role to play. Building a sustainable future through material innovation is the mission of our company.”
This mission drives the R&D team and the company as a whole to deliver better products and new functionalities. That effort is aided by another important commitment in the area of diversity and inclusion.
“The technical challenges we have to solve are diverse, and our customers are diverse, and that means our research and development team has to be diverse,” Méndez-Andino says. The chief R&D officer is working hard to increase diversity in gender, ethnicity, and technical disciplines. For example, although women and minorities are often underrepresented in the STEM fields, the company’s research team is currently 30 percent female. While that represents progress, he and his team actively recruit to continue building a team that reflects the general population.
Of course, since Owens Corning employs about four hundred and fifty engineers and scientists who work in production facilities and technology centers around the globe, the company is always provided with an array of different viewpoints. Méndez-Andino unites input from experts in a wide array of scientific and technical disciplines as well as people across the company. He gets the best performance from diverse teams by creating space for debate, discussion, and even disagreement.
“Competing ideas drive successful R&D,” he explains. “The whole premise of science lies beyond simply picking one uncontested opinion. We harness contrarian opinions, pressure test them, and transform individual insights into the collective wisdom we need to move forward.”
Thanks to this approach, MéndezAndino’s R&D team has been stacking up accomplishments. In addition to FOAMULAR NGX insulation and dozens of other new and refreshed products, the company recently introduced PINK Next Gen Fiberglas insulation and PINKBAR Fiberglas rebar. Both products are a result of the humancentered design approach that MéndezAndino champions. PINK Next Gen Fiberglas insulation, made with advanced fiber technology, delivers 23 percent faster installation, less dust, improved indoor comfort, and sound reduction. PINKBAR Fiberglas rebar, Owens Corning’s alternative to traditional steel reinforcement solutions for concrete, is lighter than steel and never rusts and reduces installation time and transportation costs.
Twenty years after starting his career, Méndez-Andino is still passionate about science, human behavior, and how those realities intersect in the business world. “I’m inspired to put all of these pieces together to make a product, a system, or a whole organization better,” he says. “And when we do that, we can make the world better too.”
By recognizing and valuing all aspects of diversity, we strengthen our ability to understand and appreciate all people. We believe a culture of appreciation fosters inclusion, which leads to high-performing teams and a successful, sustainable company. Be part of our difference.
https://jobs.owenscorning.com/
“Science alone doesn’t help us create the best products in the consumer space. Adding the study of human behavior helps us innovate on a whole new level.”
A former public servant, Miriam Enriquez brings an innovative, people-first attitude to her legal work at Comcast
EVEN AS A CHILD, MIRIAM ENRIQUEZ never doubted what shape her career would take. “I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything other than an attorney,” she says. As for her source of inspiration, that too is clear. “My father, who died when I was very young, was an attorney,” she explains. “Growing up, I was always hearing about him and that influenced my decision to pursue the law.”
Today, Enriquez serves as assistant deputy general counsel at Comcast. The media and telecommunications company has its headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Enriquez was born and where she dedicated more than a decade of her career to public service after law school. The skills that she honed during that period remain applicable
to her work at Comcast, as does her commitment to innovation, relationship-building, and justice-oriented advocacy.
Although her life began in Philadelphia, Enriquez moved to Central America as a baby. Her family’s roots are in Nicaragua, and she spent time there and elsewhere in the region before returning to the United States at the age of seven. Once she had learned English, she worked hard to excel in her studies, from grade school to college to law school.
Upon graduating with her JD, however, she diverged from the path chosen by the majority of her graduating class. “In law school, many of my classmates went to work at firms and followed that traditional route,”
she says. “I chose public service instead because it gets at the core of who I am. I’m a mission-driven person, and everything that I’ve done in my professional career has been with that in mind.”
Eager to make a difference in her community, Enriquez started out as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia district attorney’s office. She stood up for the victims and witnesses of crimes, even when others did not. “There were many times when I was the only person advocating for the victims. I very much viewed my role as a prosecutor as ensuring that justice was done for all, which sometimes meant ensuring that the defense attorney was doing everything they needed to be doing for their client as well,” she says.
Enriquez continued her advocacy for the people of Philadelphia in subsequent roles with city council and the Office of Immigrant Affairs, the latter of which she directed for several years. The roles allowed her to expand her understanding of government, policy work, and legislation while addressing real problems faced by Philadelphia residents— among them, the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who call the city home.
“My approach while in government was always centered around listening to stakeholders and building partnerships,” Enriquez says. “In addition to leading the office, I developed, honed, and managed meaningful relationships with our immigrant communities, local and national advocacy organizations, the
private sector, nonprofits, and governmental counterparts throughout the country.”
Enriquez also took an innovative approach towards immigrant inclusion that included spearheading the effort to make the Office of Immigrant Affairs a permanent part of Philadelphia’s municipal landscape— which elevated the city’s status as a national leader in immigration policy. This was especially evident when the office, in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, hosted immigration and legal leaders from major US cities to learn from Philadelphia’s innovative approach.
In searching for her next step, Enriquez was looking for a place that took a similar position to Philadelphia. “I saw Comcast as a
“In law school, many of my classmates went to work at firms and followed that traditional route. I chose public service instead because it gets at the core of who I am.”
place that was constantly leading, being innovative, and challenging itself to improve. That’s what I had been doing in my career and also what I was looking for in a company,” she says.
Enriquez’s responsibilities at Comcast require her to build partnerships in much the same way that she did while in city government. She leverages her relationships and innovative spirit to oversee compliance and ethics investigations and resolve legal-related issues both efficiently and effectively. But she takes equal pride in her contributions outside the legal department. For instance, in 2020, she collaborated with colleagues on the conception and implementation of a voter education and civic engagement initiative that capitalized on the voice-activated technology in Comcast remote controls.
Furthermore, as a leader within Unidos, Comcast’s employee resource group for Latinos, Enriquez supports the development of Latino talent across the organization—and in the field of law at large. “We all know that representation matters. Thinking about my own legal career, I didn’t really see many Latinas in the spaces in which I practiced. I still remember walking into a courtroom and for the first time, seeing a Latina lawyer speaking to the jury,” she says. “I thought to myself, ‘If she can do it, so can I.’”
Enriquez believes strongly in the need for more Latina attorneys, especially in light of recent statistics indicating that a disproportionately low number—only about 5 percent—of all US lawyers are Latino and that an even lower number—less than 2 percent—are Latina. “Every aspect of our society is affected by the law. Attorneys are our lawmakers, policymakers, politicians, judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and in-house corporate counsel,” she says. “So in order for us to be represented, we need to have representation within the law. Increasing the number of Latina lawyers would have a profound impact.”
At Comcast, Enriquez plans to continue fostering a diverse and inclusive atmosphere that makes it easier for Latinas and members of other underrepresented groups to envision themselves as meaningful participants and leaders in the space. “When you have a workforce that is as diverse as the people you serve, you find yourself more equipped with the various views, perspectives, ideas, and a greater level of innovation necessary for better serving all people,” she says.
As for her own service, Enriquez still has no doubts that she’s on the right path. “I have always worked to leave this world better than I found it,” she says. “And that is incredibly fulfilling.”
They also inspire a deep connection to the Latino community, and to all the communities we serve.
Comcast NBCUniversal is proud to support Hispanic Executive.
La diversidad, la equidad y la inclusion son nuestras bases para la innovación e impulsan nuestro negocio.
Almendares understands how to connect the present to the future, no matter the scale or circumstances
BY NATALIE KOCHANOV // PORTRAITS BY WINNI WINTERMEYER Life Time Inc. Board Member and Meta Product Executive Jimena
IMENA ALMENDARES
once envisioned becoming a figure skating coach in her home country of Mexico. Even when her path diverged from that trajectory, the three-time national champion began applying key lessons from the sport to her equally high-powered career.
“In figure skating, there was the daily discipline of looking at where you want to go and where you are right now,” Almendares says. “As an executive, it’s about seeing the long-term goal, figuring out the pieces you need to construct, and taking it one piece at a time to get to that future.”
Her background in skating also influenced Almendares’s decision to join the board of Life Time Inc., a health and fitness chain with club locations across the country. As a board member, she has advised the company on an initial public offering as well as the societal shift from in-gym to at-home workouts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
She balances board duties with her ongoing role as a product executive at Meta, where she oversees the customer experience across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the rest of the company’s global platform. The two roles feed into one another, as both require her to draw on her understanding of product and scale—and her ability to be comfortable in the face of uncertainty.
Almendares began her career in Europe, with international roles in supply chain
management and strategic consulting at logistics company DB Schenker and consulting firm Capgemini Ernst & Young, respectively. Coming up against language barriers, she learned to pay attention to the nuances of emotion and motivation—a focus that she maintained after moving to the United States to pursue her growing interest in tech.
“Emotions are actually very important for product building,” she explains. “People who are interacting with a device are in reality trying to achieve a goal, and they experience a lot of emotions in relationship to what they’re doing.”
As she took on increasingly senior roles at companies like Zynga, Meetup, OkCupid, and Intuit, Almendares developed a leadership style that revolves around the power of opportunity. “In many cases, just sharing a vision for the future helps people see how they can fit into it,” she says. “And a lot of the spaces they end up filling are beyond what they originally expected of their role or what they thought they could do.”
For Almendares, solving problems has often required collaborating across disciplines, languages, and cultures. Now, as part
of Life Time’s board, her work spans industries as well. “I have a unique voice because of my understanding of tech, which permeates multiple types of industries—even ones where you might not necessarily see a connection. For instance, Life Time is creating an experience that will allow you to connect when you’re going to the gym to when you’re working out at home through apps and data,” she explains.
From 2018 to 2020, Almendares served on two subsidiary boards for Intuit, and she has been a board member of the nonprofit Out
“Sometimes people feel afraid when they’re the only [Latino] in the room, but they are exactly who is needed because theirs is the one voice that was missing.”
for Undergrad, which connects LGBTQ+ college students with corporate career opportunities, since 2018. However, she considers Life Time her true introduction to the boardroom. “Your role changes a lot,” she says of serving on a corporate board. “You’re no longer in charge of the execution; you’re recommending and trying to fill the gaps in terms of the perspective the board needs.”
women to do the same. “I’m really glad that I didn’t listen to my less confident self,” she says. “I often hear from women that they’re interested in boards, but they don’t know when to start. The answer is that board careers are a journey. The sooner you start, the better a board member you will be.”
When Almendares joined Life Time’s board, she was the only independent board member and the only woman on the board. As such, Almendares views her membership as a significant stride in female representation.
“Sometimes people feel afraid when they’re the only [Latino] in the room, but they are exactly who is needed because theirs is the one voice that was missing. The experiences they’ve had, regardless of their gender or race or where they grew up, are what gives them a valuable, unique point of view,” she says. “It’s very empowering to know that you’re not only representing that unique point of view but also inspiring others.”
Almendares’s own perspective on building products and launching them at scale made her a good fit for Life Time. Before accepting the position, though, she had to consider whether Life Time would be a good fit for her.
“When searching for boards, you need to think about the group of people you’re going to be working with,” she says. “You spend a lot of time in that meeting room, so you need to make sure the experience will be additive to whatever you’re doing in your day-to-day job.”
Although she was wary of becoming a board member on top of her role at Meta, Almendares took the leap—and urges other
Almendares hopes to remain an inspiration moving forward, especially for members of the next generation. By bringing the entirety of her experience to bear, she stands only to expand her already considerable impact as a board member, advisor, and mentor in the future.
“I believe in different iterations of oneself. Every decade is a new book chapter, but sometimes it’s only after the fact that you realize how all of the pieces fit together,” Almendares says.
“I don’t need to see the full path ahead to be certain that it will probably aggregate into something amazing.”
“In many cases, just sharing a vision for the future helps people see how they can fit into it.”
For three decades, Peggy Turner has a built a reputation as an expert in auto manufacturing and marketing. Now, she’s making her mark as a board leader for a large nonprofit and a NASDAQ-listed financial firm.
BY RUSS KLETTKEEGGY TURNER MORE THAN MEETS the “10,000-hour rule” espoused by author Malcolm Gladwell in his acclaimed 2008 book, Outliers: The Story of Success. Over the course of thirty years with Toyota Motors North America, she has risen from parts and service sales, price, and logistics for the automaker to a vice presidential role—and is clearly an expert on cars and the people who make them.
In fact, simple math says Turner’s probably put in more than sixty thousand hours in a succession of roles with Toyota (and that’s not even counting the hours she spent in a prior job in the aerospace industry). She’s obviously someone who sticks to her goals and is recognized for it. And because she is not satisfied with simply being a vice president and executive advisor for social innovation at Toyota, Turner now sits on both a corporate board and the board of directors of a major nonprofit—two commitments that consume more time than many people realize.
“Social innovation” is the automaker’s term for diversity, equity, inclusion, and philanthropy. Turner’s job is to ensure a diverse talent pool within the company, and to provide a leadership perspective as the firm transitions to a more broadly defined “mobility company” (parlaying vehicle electrification into other products and services).
“The Latino population has grown from 16.3 percent in 2010 to 18.7 percent of the US in 2020,” the VP says, explaining that this marks the demographic as an increasingly important market. She adds that Toyota already has a leading position with Hispanic motorists. But of equal or even greater importance are female car buyers of all stripes. “Women purchase 65 percent of all vehicles, and influence the purchase of 80 percent,” Turner points out. “That affects design.”
But it should be no surprise that auto manufacturing and marketing is traditionally the province of men. Nevertheless, Turner was undeterred when she started with the company in the early 1990s, even though she was very much an outlier from the start. She moved on up through positions in parts and accessory marketing, new business development, distributor services (procurement and planning), supply chain strategy, real estate and facilities operations, customer relations, and Lexus guest experience and customer loyalty strategy. Turner knows cars, from the grill to the trunk.
And to be clear, the cars of today are quite different from when she joined the company. “Now we have a greater focus on safety and
the environment,” she says. “Also, we maintain a laser focus on data analytics, particularly as it enables us to improve service and customer satisfaction. And with telematics (the technology embedded in vehicles), we can use data to analyze and inform individual drivers as to what they need to do to keep the car running smoothly.” Turner adds that data not only ensures better and timelier car maintenance but helps in the design of future vehicles.
Turner was and remains actively engaged in these innovations. She credits the company’s success with its embrace of kaizen principles, a Japanese term which roughly translated means “continuous improvement,” in its manufacturing as well as overall business practices.
Turner’s own career has reflected the idea of kaizen: in addition to her accomplishments within Toyota, she has been appointed as a board member for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund as well as for PRA Group Inc., a global loan acquisition and collections firm.
Her experiences for these two boards have been similar and at the same time quite different, Turner reports. “Of course the forprofit company pays me and the other asks us to bring in money,” she says. But in both cases, she says looking at the organization from a 50,000-foot level has required a change in her mindset, something that was an adjustment after her multiple decades of experience in the automotive sector.
Both positions carry significant amounts of responsibility, with a commensurate time commitment to boot. In her capacity as a
board member for the PRA Group, Turner attends two day-long meetings every quarter for board and committee meetings, an annual stockholder’s meeting (the company is traded on the NASDAQ exchange), and ad hoc meetings for budget and strategy. “And that doesn’t even include the time required to prepare for meetings,” Turner notes. Still, she welcomes learning about an industry outside the one she’s worked in for decades.
Her work with the Hispanic Scholarship Fund is no less demanding. “I got involved with HSF because of my passion for moving the Latino community forward,” Turner says. “I enjoy sharing my experiences in board oversight functions. And I’m meeting people who are also on other corporate boards.”
Fortunately, Turner was well prepared for these board roles. Prior to securing her current seats, she participated in the Latino Corporate Directors Association’s “Board Readiness Institute” and 5050WOB “Get on Board” training. She also attended a seminar with Women for Economic Leadership Development (WELD) focused on board membership.
If Turner regrets anything in her career, it’s not getting involved in board leadership sooner. But she was raising a family alongside her husband, whose career was also demanding. Now, with their two sons out of school and gainfully employed, Turner looks forward to additional work in business and community leadership roles.
Turner might be an outlier, as Malcolm Gladwell would say. But she also has very much an inside track on getting things done.
“I got involved with [the Hispanic Scholarship Fund] because of my passion for moving the Latino community forward.”
Sandra Campos is a retail leader with experience in luxury fashion, entrepreneurship, and everything in between. As a member of the Big Lots board of directors, she has an opportunity to apply her diverse experience in a new way.
HEN A RECRUITER CALLED to inquire about her interest in joining the Big Lots board of directors, Sandra Campos had what seemed an unusual reaction: she burst out laughing. “The recruiter asked why I was laughing, and I said, ‘Because my kids make fun of me for going to Big Lots so often,’” says Campos, a mother of three. “I have three Big Lots within thirty minutes of me, and I go there on a regular basis.”
Campos has sat on the board of the affordable retailer since May 2021. She has also served on the board of Project Verte, a technology-driven supply chain company that she previously served as CEO. A relative newcomer to the corporate boardroom, she nonetheless brings considerable experience to the table as a seasoned veteran of the fashion industry and a successful business founder in her own right. Between her retail savvy and her passion for innovation, she’s more than ready to show the board world what she can do.
Campos gravitated toward fashion from an early age, but understood from the start that the industry is as much a business as any other. After cutting her teeth at highend labels Polo Ralph Lauren and Oscar de la Renta, she reinvigorated a portfolio of turn-of-the-millennium brands including Juicy Couture, Bebe, and BCBG. She then went on to become CEO of Diane von Furstenberg (DVF), a company known as much for its iconic clothing as for its dedication to female empowerment.
That mindset resonated with Campos, who espouses a leadership philosophy likewise built on empowerment, collaboration, and inclusivity. “Leadership today is very different from when I was first starting out in the industry. Now, you need to make sure that you’re incorporating everyone and everything,” she says. “At DVF, I was able to find more of my inner confidence and focus my efforts on other people and their successes, especially within the Latina community.”
Campos recently founded Fashion Launchpad, an online education platform for professionals in fashion and retail. However, her initial foray into entrepreneurship took place back in 2010, when she created a celebrity brand management company that developed and handled a lifestyle business for then-teen sensation Selena Gomez.
“An incredible amount was changing in the industry at the time. Consumer tastes were changing, and it was no longer about dictating what a fashion trend was going to be—it was about influencers telling us what was important,” Campos explains. “But we knew the market, we knew what demographic we wanted to go after, and we were able to execute.”
Campos has focused on the consumer throughout her career, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which younger generations and emerging technologies are shifting consumer priorities and retail dynamics. “I
consider myself to be a student of culture and a student of the consumer. I love being able to identify opportunities that are going to click,” she says. “Sometimes you’re a little ahead of the curve, and sometimes you’re right on time. It’s a matter of trying to trust your instinct in determining when the right time is to innovate.”
In Campos’s eyes, innovation requires absorbing as much information as possible about the latest advancements and industry trends. She engages in daily research to remain at the forefront, whether that means exploring artificial intelligence as a modernization tactic for back-end logistics or investigating new methods for streamlining the ecommerce returns process.
Campos recognized her knowledge of technology and digital retail practices as an asset when she started eying seats on corporate boards. She urges aspiring board members to identify what sets them apart as an individual, consider the boardroom applications of their skills, and use their network to their advantage. “Just like with anything else, you have to put yourself out there and let people know that you’re looking for a board seat,” she notes. “I always encourage people to be an extrovert professionally because maintaining relationships and being in the conversation is really important if you want to be on boards.”
Campos views her membership on the Big Lots and Project Verte boards as an opportunity to increase her impact. In the case of Big Lots specifically, it’s also a chance to reconnect with a customer base close to her heart. “The community that shops at Big Lots is one I can very much relate to. While some of my experience has been luxury, I not only understand but also value and appreciate the mainstream consumer who is spending their hard-earned money at Big Lots,” she says. “This customer base is someone who really is everyone, and to me, it’s a gift to be able to have that customer.”
As for her fellow board members, Campos feels inspired by their level of experience and respect for one another. Each member draws on their unique background to propel the collective toward a common goal—a collaborative spirit that keeps Campos excited for what lies ahead.
When she looks to the future, Campos envisions opening doors for people like her. “I’m focused on elevating more voices and providing another platform for entrepreneurs with business ideas as well as people who want to help from a social change perspective,” she says. “There is so much that this next generation of Latin entrepreneurs is going to be able to do, and I’m hoping I can contribute, whether through board work or anything else I do.”
“Sometimes you’re a little ahead of the curve, and sometimes you’re right on time. It’s a matter of trying to trust your instinct in determining when the right time is to innovate.”
Pure Storage CHRO Alessandra Yockelson details her plan to support the company’s aggressive growth and shares what it takes to land a coveted seat in the corporate boardroom
BY ZACH BALIVA
Yockelson joined Pure Storage as its chief human resources officer in 2021, the fast-growing enterprise IT company already had four thousand employees and $1.7 billion in annual revenue. Those were impressive numbers, especially since the business had only been established a decade earlier. But Pure Storage leaders wanted to build upon their early success, and they asked Yockelson to help advance their human capital practices to enable the business’s ambition of doubling its size.
That kind of aggressive push is part of the Pure Storage playbook. By 2013, just four years after the company’s launch, leaders had raised nearly $250 million in venture capital investments, and Pure Storage’s revenues were doubling every quarter. The company was quickly recognized and respected as a true disruptor in the storage market thanks to its flash-based storage drives, used and loved by data center operators for their increased data storage capacity and low power usage in a smaller physical space.
A 2015 IPO thrust Pure Storage into the national spotlight, and Yockelson says the strong culture has continued to enable the founders’ original vision. “I came to a company filled with creative, aggressive people who are trying to break new ground and develop new products and solutions,” she says. “We have a team of people obsessed with innovation and customer experience.”
Yockelson came to Pure Storage at an important time. She’s in place to advance a human capital agenda that will help what was once a trendy start-up mature into a global enterprise. To make the transition, Pure Storage will have to expand its focus on talent acquisition, especially abroad, and introduce succession and talent management practices as well as investments in accelerated leadership development. All of these are needed to build talent into leaders of the future.
Three programs will help Yockelson ensure Pure Storage is ready to meet its goals for growth. First, she’s developing robust succession planning, career development, and leadership development programs. Second, she’s implementing DEI strategies to build a culture of inclusion that gives everyone (including people from underrepresented groups) opportunities. Third, she’s escalating and automating services to employees and leaders that enable the company to effectively operate globally as it opens new offices in international locations like Bangalore and Prague.
Maintaining the elements that make a company special amidst rapid growth is no easy task. Yockelson, who has master’s degrees, MBAs, a PhD, and other advanced training, thinks of culture as a ball kept afloat by various sources of air. A CHRO and other leaders can shift one of the streams influencing the ball, but they must be sure the ball doesn’t rise, drop, or burst.
Yockelson says those in a CHRO role should be able to communicate the end state
and describe and outline the behaviors they want to support and recognize. Then, even in a fast-paced environment, leaders can hire the right candidates. At Pure Storage, that means onboarding people who have seen a business scale with high growth and identifying leaders who can run a $5 billion business.
As it grows, Pure Storage continues to evolve its products and business models. The company is now known as a storage and data management leader that offers onpremise infrastructure products and solutions, a bridge to the public cloud and cloud integration, and a unique subscription model meeting customers where they are both today and tomorrow. “We’re doing things nobody else is doing in this space, and we have the right plan to keep innovating well into the future,” Yockelson says.
Yockelson came to Pure Storage after holding key positions at Volkswagen, Avon, Philips, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in Brazil, the Netherlands, and the United States. She was born in São Paulo, has lived on three continents, and speaks fluent English, Spanish, and Portuguese. This background, combined with her demonstrated experience in building performance cultures, has put her in high demand for executive committees and corporate board positions.
In 2021, Yockelson accepted a board position with iCIMS, the company behind the world’s leading talent cloud. The all-in-one recruiting platform is a software-as-a-service
“The first board seat is the most challenging one to get because people want experienced directors. Persistence is key.”
model, making it a perfect fit for the techsavvy CHRO. She can both learn from iCIMS’ approach and offer her own experience and insights to help guide its strategy.
Securing a seat at the boardroom table was both a longstanding goal and the logical next step for Yockelson. “Board membership helps C-level executives become more strategic as they hand off some of the direct day-to-day work,” she explains, adding that she’s excited
to see how she can apply what she learns at iCIMS to her work at Pure Storage.
Finding a board-level opportunity took some time, and Yockelson was selective. She vetted organizations and analyzed their visions, values, and leadership. She encourages others looking for their first board seat to take their time and stay optimistic. “The first board seat is the most challenging one to get because people want experienced directors,” she explains. “Persistence is key.” While rising professionals might be told they don’t “have the right profile,” business acumen and the ability to provide trusted advice now carry more weight than a traditional pedigree, Yockelson notes.
Still, preparation matters. As Yockelson searched for her first breakthrough position, she readied herself by researching board governance, interviewing various board members, attending seminars, and joining organizations like the Latino Corporate Directors Association. Then, she started reaching out to members of her network and making her interest in board membership known.
And Yockelson has not been alone in preparing for the future. Pure Storage’s CEO Charlie Giancarlo is looking ahead to 2027. That’s when he says the price difference between his flash-based technology and the solid-state drives used by large competitors like Dell and HPE will vanish. When that happens, Pure Storage will have the best technology at the best price—and Yockelson is working to make sure it has the best team to capitalize on the opportunity.
Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri has secured a well-deserved spot as a leader on corporate boards. Now, she wants to see other diverse executives follow in her footsteps.
BY BILLY YOSTACK IN 2019, WHEN ANILU Vazquez-Ubarri was selected as one of The Alumni Society’s Class of 2019 honorees, she was just settling into a new role. The Goldman Sachs veteran had earned a reputation as the person to call to build out a talent development team, a new concept she had helped pioneer and one that has become more and more normalized in future-looking organizations working to create diverse and enduring talent pipelines.
“I’m proud that those efforts have become a model for other firms and that talent development is something that’s becoming more commonplace in financial services and private equity,” says Vazquez-Ubarri, who now serves as a partner and as the chief human resources officer at TPG. “It’s been one of my biggest accomplishments to create something that is new, to build something that didn’t exist before.”
Along with her significant impact on the future of DEI, Vazquez-Ubarri is also helping pave the way for more Hispanic leadership on corporate boards. As she knows full well, there is an immense wealth of talent that is ready and willing to serve on those boards—if only given the chance.
Vazquez-Ubarri’s passion for this subject is strongly rooted in her recent experiences as a member of
Upwork’s board of directors, which she joined in 2020. “I was attracted to Upwork for a number of different reasons,” she explains. “They have a female CEO [Hayden Brown] who was previously at the company, and I saw they had put effective succession management into place that allowed that to happen. Secondly, the board was diverse even before I joined. I was the fourth woman and second person of color to come on board, so I knew they were coming to me for my expertise, not to meet a requirement.”
This isn’t the CHRO’s first foray into board leadership. Vazquez-Ubarri also serves on the board of directors for TPG portfolio company Greenhouse, a role that is particularly close to her heart. “Greenhouse’s whole mission is to equalize the recruiting process,” she says, “and they’re proving that you don’t have to have concessionary returns in order to do good.
“I’m hoping to continue to raise the question of diverse representation across the industry,” she continues, “[and show that] there’s nothing wrong with having more than one person of color on a board. No one balks at more than one white male serving on a board, so I’m hoping to foster a more holistic conversation about finding the true best candidate for the role, wherever they come from.”
Vazquez-Ubarri’s philosophy when it comes to her board work, her day job, and her changemaking mission
is defined by a clear commitment to helping make new inroads for diverse candidates. Those candidates are more than qualified, she says, and are often the best choice for a role, but are nevertheless overlooked.
The slate of calls Vazquez-Ubarri received to join more boards after taking on the Upwork role is a prime example of what she wants to change. “The calls were great, but you should be calling other people who haven’t gotten their first experience yet,” she explains. “The only way the Hispanic community is going to move ahead is by focusing on our peers and being committed to each other.”
Vazquez-Ubarri is an active member of the Latino Corporate Directors Association (LCDA), an organization that TPG sponsors. The CHRO looks to the LCDA as a vital source for education and networking opportunities for those looking for their first board roles. There’s also a more informal effect that Vazquez-Ubarri says is just as important, if not more so.
“Supporting organizations like the LCDA and being active helps me keep the names of people I think might be a good fit for roles at the ready,” Vazquez-Ubarri explains. “When I get a call asking to sit on a board, I’ve got a list of five or six people I think they should contact. It’s a chance for me to play matchmaker and advance the mission of both myself and the organization.”
But there is one other role that Vazquez-Ubarri wasn’t able to pass on. TPG completed its initial public offering in mid-January 2022, and Vazquez-Ubarri is now serving on the company’s board as one of two Hispanic executives.
The opportunity makes complete sense, especially given all Vazquez-Ubarri has done to make her current role her own. Along with more traditional CHRO responsibilities, Vazquez-Ubarri has led the company’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, acted as an executive sponsor for TPG Next (the company’s investment in diverse managers working to start their own funds, through which Vazquez-Ubarri has sourced two of three successful funds herself), and partnered with the communications department she oversees to help amplify the company’s goals to employees.
“That’s one thing I really want people to understand,” the CHRO says. “You can construct a role in
a number of different ways with human capital at the core. You just have to find the right organization to continue to build out those skills.”
At this point in her career, Vazquez-Ubarri has the awards, the lists, and the résumé that many dream of. She’s helped build a pipeline that will increase diversity not just in junior roles but in senior leadership as well. And in 2021 alone, she helped ensure that 67 percent of TPG’s total hires were diverse.
But Vazquez-Ubarri is nowhere near ready to stop. Now, she wants to help more Hispanics enter the boardroom. She’s there because she deserves it, and she knows there are many who belong beside her.
“No one balks at more than one white male serving on a board, so I’m hoping to foster a more holistic conversation about finding the true best candidate for the role, wherever they come from.”
Former President, Chilled Foods Business
Nestlé
Celeste De Armas is a senior executive with experience in large multinational corporations and early-stage companies. De Armas is presently CEO of RiskRator, a fintech start-up, and president of CSMB International, a consulting practice with a broad scope of services ranging from AML regulatory compliance, new bank formation, growth strategies, mergers and acquisitions, and business operational improvements. De Armas provides strategic, operational, and M&A consulting services and guides the overall growth and operational strategy for CSMB.
De Armas previously held senior executive positions at Nestlé, the world’s largest food company. In her last role with Nestlé, De Armas was president of the Chilled Foods Business unit, a division with over $500 million in annual revenue and more than five hundred employees. During her tenure, the unit’s revenue doubled from the successful launch of new businesses.
Prior to her involvement with CSMB, De Armas held CEO/COO and founder roles in three early-stage companies. De Armas became CEO of CW/ Rampage, a marketing and digital agency that was sold following rapid revenue growth. De Armas then led a refrigerated foods start-up from $1 to $10 million in revenue and subsequently launched Nueva Cocina Foods, the first line of 100 percent natural Latin foods. Nueva Cocina was sold to a large multinational consumer products company in 2012.
Global COO
Selina
Paulo A. Pena is a seasoned senior global executive with over twenty-five years of operating, financial, and marketing experience. He has worked for several world-class brands, including McDonald’s Corporation, the Coca-Cola Company, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Ernst & Young. He is currently chief operating officer at Selina.
Pena has served as board director and treasurer of ExpandED Schools, an education nonprofit founded in 1998, and regularly presents operating results, strategy, and initiatives to the Selina board of directors in his role as COO.
Pena is known for delivering strong growth, increased sales, and improved margins due to his customer focus, passion for innovation, and leadership of high-performance teams. He also provides a truly global perspective. He has lived and worked in multiple US cities as well as in Australia, Belgium, and Argentina. While working in the Coca-Cola Company’s international corporate audit department, he conducted internal audits in twelve countries.
Pena holds a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Goldman Sachs
Heather Von Zuben currently serves as global head of client portfolio solutions and alternative investment manager selection at Goldman Sachs, where she has spent more than fourteen years developing an expertise in capital markets, investment management, and investment strategies (including private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and credit).
She has been featured by The Alumni Society, the Glass Hammer, and other prominent outlets. As highlighted by CNBC, Von Zuben was included in Goldman Sachs’ partner class of 2021.
Mike Roggero is a business veteran with more than twenty-five years of financial and management experience with Fortune 100 companies and start-ups. Roggero currently leads Fuse Media, a multiplatform entertainment media brand for Latino and multicultural youth, as chairman and CEO. During his tenure, the company has established a strategic alliance with superstar and entrepreneur Jennifer Lopez. In 2014, the company executed a transformative $226 million acquisition of Fuse from the Madison Square Garden Company, resulting in the creation of Fuse Media and the establishment of the nation’s largest privately held independent cable network. Roggero led the $240 million bond financing and created $55 million in synergies from the acquisition.
Previously, Roggero was a group executive with Reed Business Information (RBI), the chief finance officer and executive vice president of operations at eMind LLC, and an executive leader at the Walt Disney Company, PepsiCo, and Paramount Pictures. He holds a BS in business administration from the University of Southern California, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
María Elena Carrion has thirty years of experience in the financial industry, specializing in investments and mergers and acquisitions. Previously, she was managing director and head of the emerging markets team at Prudential Investments, where she oversaw a team of portfolio managers, analysts, and traders based in Newark and Hong Kong. Prior to that, she was the head of the emerging markets equity team at Bankers Trust in New York. She managed mutual funds in New York City and London for fourteen years and started her career at US Trust in 1986.
The philosophies of innovative leaders have the power to inspire and spark change. Read on for the thought-provoking insights of these successful executives.
132. Adrianna Bustamante, Rackspace Technology 137. Daniel Guzman, H-E-B and Favor Delivery 141. Christianne Sanchez Robinson, Just Energy 144. Kelvin Llaverias, Florida Crystals 146. Ricardo Resio, Morley 149. Carlos Adame, Pan-American Life Insurance Group 152. Alexander Reyes, Citrin Cooperman 155. Jorge Perez, Truist Financial Corporation 158. Rob Rodriguez, Whataburger 160. Miguel Hernandez, Henry Company 166. Kirk Santos, Pitney Bowes 171. Vivian Martinez-Wells, Barnes Aerospace 174. Eddie Moreno, Cardinal Group Management 176. Maria Martinez, Murphy Oil Corporation 179. Juan C. Rodriguez, Comerica Bank 182. Kleber Santos, Wells Fargo 186. Patricia Salas Barnard, PlanSourceAdrianna Bustamante pushes her team to the next level at Rackspace Technology
Technology in 2006, having spent the previous two and a half years working publicity at Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. A Texas native, Bustamante left Hollywood to return to the Lone Star State to pursue a new opportunity in a new industry. That was fifteen years and nine promotions ago.
The current vice president of global alliances and partnerships has helped Rackspace Technology become a premier partner for cloud solutions for the most wellknown names in technology: Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, VMWare, Intel, Microsoft Azure, and countless others.
Bustamante’s expertise and responsibility increased exponentially during her tenure at Rackspace Technology. Her willingness to think about the business differently enabled the creation of new revenue streams, including helping create a digital practice that went from $7 million at inception to $120 million seven years later.
“I have had the opportunity numerous times to be part of something new that we hadn’t done at Rackspace Technology before,” Bustamante explains. “When you’re building something new, you have to be scrappy and tenacious while also maintaining a real sense of humility from knowing that it’s not something you can do alone.”
Going it alone isn’t Bustamante style—not because she can’t, but because her success lies in her ability to create lasting and meaningful partnerships with tech’s biggest players. It’s a skill that was surely part of the company earning VMWare’s Partner of the Year Award in 2020, and Bustamante’s recognition in 2020 and 2021 as one of CRN magazine’s “Women of the Channel” list and part of CRN ’s “100 People You Don’t Know But Should” list.
Helping grow the Rackspace Technology business required the tenacity which the vice president seems to have on tap.
Adrianna Bustamante VP of Global Alliances & Partnerships Rackspace Technology“Early in my career here, I realized that we had partners that were asking us to do more than our capabilities and build additional expertise around their platforms,” Bustamante explains. “We had a highly engaged partner, and we just knocked on everyone’s door internally in hopes of getting their attention, helping outline the business case for expanding our business, and working with our partners to figure out what we wanted to create. We realized that it was up to us to create this vision.”
Over a decade and a half of undeniable success, Bustamante’s evolution as a leader has been significant. In her current role, the executive says one of her biggest passions is helping those around her maximize their potential.
“I tell my team that everyone is a leader regardless of their title,” Bustamante explains. “Everyone has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in their roles, so I ask them to think about how they are showing this in their own ways. How are they helping lead others?”
The VP is walking the talk. She’s moved on from serving as a chair of POWER, the Professional Organization of Women’s Empowerment at Rackspace Technology, into an executive sponsorship role, making way for new leaders to earn their stripes. Bustamante says her goal is to keep those leaders at an “appropriate level of discomfort” because that is the perfect incubation environment for real growth.
As Rackspace VP of Global Alliances and Partnerships, Adrianna understands how diversity drives innovation. With her hands-on leadership, Rackspace has become a key VMware Cloud provider partner and earned the 2020 Global VMware Partner of the Year Award for Social Impact.
Congratulations!
Learn more about Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by VMware cloud.vmware.com/providers/ cloud-providers/rackspace-inc
“I relish any opportunity to have not only our female Rackspace Technology employees grow but also our partners that I work with outside the company,” Bustamante says. “If I can provide an opportunity for another woman to raise her hand and embrace that discomfort, I’m going to help make it happen.”
That “optimal discomfort” Bustamante seeks to provide spills over into her personal life as well. The VP is a master cycle instructor for JoyRide Cycling Studio in San Antonio. “It’s another way for me to make an impact on others in a way that is completely different from Rackspace Technology,” Bustamante explains. “I always said that I would step back if it ever felt like work, but, truly, I thrive more because of what our riders and the community bring to me.”
For Bustamante, it’s yet another opportunity to build relationships. It’s another opportunity to develop a new outlook, a new idea, and a new point of contact. Just as the VP pushes her team to evolve in new directions, she’s able to push her riders past their comfort zones and achieve something more profound, whatever that may mean for each individual.
“Profound” is also likely the word the VP might use to describe her outlook for 2022. She could only speak broadly about what’s on the horizon in her December 2021 interview, but her excitement about her continued efforts at Rackspace Technology is palpable.
“We’ve created a lot of great momentum with our partners like VMWare and Dell Technologies, and I’m really excited about new partnerships we are developing with companies such as Snowflake and Datadog and others,” Bustamante says. “I feel like we’ve been building some new motions and ways to do business with partnerships that are going to be big this year.
“I love to build,” she adds. “This is the year for the fireworks.”
“I tell my team that everyone is a leader regardless of their title.”
THERE ARE A FEW THINGS MOST TRUE Texans can’t do without. Barbeque, football, cowboy boots, country music, and H-E-B. That last one is a regional grocery chain that might be unknown in other parts of the country, but it enjoys cult status in the Lone Star State, where shoppers flock to its 350 locations for basic necessities and fan favorites like hatch chili cookies. When winter storms or seasonal hurricanes strike, Texans rely on two entities for relief—the Red Cross and H-E-B.
In 2018, the 116-year-old family-owned business set out to serve Texans in a whole new way by partnering with Favor Delivery.
Daniel Guzman has spent the last four years helping launch the new endeavor. Favor Delivery is a growing on-demand delivery service that is helping H-E-B meet its customers’ changing needs in new ways. Guzman, an adaptable lawyer with a proven history of
tackling new and unusual assignments, says he was excited to take on the important job.
“These are two strong companies that have come together in a special way to do something neither could do on its own,” he says. Favor retains its brand but benefits from being H-E-B’s wholly owned subsidiary by tapping into H-E-B’s large customer base. The grocer leverages Favor’s data-driven tech platform and on-demand delivery services.
Guzman joined H-E-B in 2014 and added head of legal at Favor Delivery to his duties in late 2018. He managed legal aspects of the acquisition and then shifted to signing new partners, negotiating contracts, overseeing regulatory compliance, managing the company’s litigation, and facilitating Favor’s growth outside Austin to the rest of the state. Along the way Guzman started a wonderful family, marrying his wife Rose. They now have two
children, Violet and Dylan. The Favor transition required Guzman to relocate his family from San Antonio to Austin, which they fully supported.
It’s not the first time his career has required a move. Guzman grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and spent his childhood nurturing dual interests in computer science and law. He programmed video games, enrolled in AP classes, watched Law & Order marathons, and entered a local college with enough credits to start as a junior. He applied to law school after his first year, graduated in two years, and was accepted into New York University School of Law when he was just nineteen years old. His parents, he says, always encouraged him to take on new challenges and to push his limits. They were extremely proud when he was the first person in their immediate family to attend law school.
Even though Guzman was excited to attend the Big Apple’s oldest law school, the move required him to learn the important skill of adaptability. He went from a rural town to a big city, from warm weather to frigid temperatures, and from being accepted to feeling isolated. Since he couldn’t get into the bars and parties his collegeage friends were attending, he doubled down on his studies, passed critical
first-year exams, learned how to excel in his new environment, and graduated with an offer from the Manhattan office of the prestigious global law firm Jones Day.
While Guzman was working at one of the world’s top law firms, he developed a love for transactional work and spent five years developing his expertise as a mergers and acquisitions associate. Along the way, he advised Fortune 500 companies on corporate governance issues, completed his first acquisition and IPO, and learned the ins and outs of SEC regulations. In 2013, Guzman went out “on loan” to manage joint ventures and equity investments for Mastercard, and the experience opened his eyes to in-house work. He started plotting an eventual return to his home state, and when he noticed that H-E-B had an opening, he seized the opportunity to join one of his favorite companies.
First, Guzman negotiated technology and sponsorship agreements, managed compliance programs, and advised leaders at H-E-B, but since the company acquired Favor Delivery, he’s shifted to help the innovative company harness the power of H-E-B’s network. When the companies joined forces, Favor was in less than fifty markets. Just twelve months later, that number
“These are two strong Texas companies that have come together in a special way to do something neither could do on its own.”
PERKINS COIE is proud to partner with H-E-B and Daniel Guzman and recognizes his contributions to the company’s success.
PerkinsCoie.com
Daniel Guzman never lost his childhood interest in gadgets and computers. In fact, he took advantage of the pandemic slowdown to build his own high-end gaming PC with an Nvidia GeForce 30 series graphics card. The hobby also gave him a way to reconnect with once-distant friends while participating in live, multiplayer campaigns. Flexibility and maintaining personal connections both in-person and virtually are important to avoiding burnout. At work, Guzman and other leaders are promoting flexibility while also enticing their colleagues back to the office on a part-time and volunteer basis by providing free food trucks and other perks.
jumped to 130 and its employee count almost tripled. Amongst other things, Guzman has helped streamline and standardize Trust & Safety and driver onboarding processes to take the company’s delivery driver base from ten thousand to eighty thousand while navigating emerging legal issues along the way. Guzman is quick to credit the H-E-B corporate law team, H-E-B’s CCO Steve Mount, the Favor executive team, and Favor’s CEO Jag Bath for helping make his transition successful.
Like most other big assignments throughout his career, the project has required intense levels of adaptability. Guzman relies on the help of one multitalented paralegal to implement new contract software, stay on top of emerging legal issues, monitor what business leaders are doing, and master delivery rules and restrictions that can change by city and county. Frequent changes require him to be in constant communications with his counterparts in marketing, operations, support, product, IT, and engineering who make updates to Favor Delivery’s driver interface and digital app.
Now, Guzman and his colleagues are exploring the future of H-E-B’s partnership with Favor. “In some ways, we’re still just at the start. We know we have the right people, infrastructure, and systems to take both H-E-B and Favor to the next level,” he says. In 2022, he expects Favor to partner with new restaurants, grow the business, introduce more options and features, and even experiment with new delivery verticals beyond food. Whatever happens, one thing is for sure— Guzman, H-E-B, and Favor will continue to deliver something special to consumers in the state of Texas.
enjoyed her career in advertising. But eight years in, she realized that climbing the ladder to become a chief marketing officer wasn’t something she wanted to do.
Robinson started considering graduate school. Her mom—who worked at a law firm as what they called a runner at the time, carrying messages and legal documents around the office—recommended that her daughter give law school a shot. At first, Robinson dismissed the idea, but after thinking about the skills needed to be a successful lawyer— reading, writing, analytical thinking—she decided to give it a go.
The Austin native attended the University of Houston Law Center. After graduating, she worked for a couple of small firms before landing at Just Energy in 2012.
Just Energy, Robinson explains, sells natural gas and electricity supply to residential and commercial customers under long-term fixed-price, price-protected, or variable-priced contracts. The company also
offers energy efficient solutions and green energy products.
“It feels like I found my fit,” Robinson says. “For me, the in-house route was something I was really familiar with, because this was my second career and I’d already been in that corporate world. I really felt like my skills as a marketing person helped me transition to being part of a business team.”
Over almost a decade at the company, she’s seen a lot of transitions, but she’s always rolled with the changes. Robinson started out as legal counsel, and in 2018, she was promoted to senior legal counsel.
“I have benefited greatly from mentoring opportunities,” Robinson notes. And she tries to pay that forward, most recently by offering mentorship and providing engaging projects to a paralegal team member.
“I share about experiences from my own path and help her along in her own professional journey,” Robinson says. “I try to lead by example and be very open. Anytime my direct report, my paralegal, or anyone needs
me, my door is open. I try to be available, listen, and work on solutions together. Knowing we are all on the same team is very important to reaching that common goal.”
Being in-house requires Robinson to be a jack-of-all-trades. In general, her responsibilities are to support all of Just Energy’s teams—operations, sales, IT, HR—drafting and negotiating agreements and helping people navigate anything with any legal implications.
Robinson has also played a key role in Terrapass, the environmental solutions arm of the business that works toward a more sustainable planet by pursuing solutions to climate change. She explains that Terrapass provides customers with renewable energy credits and carbon offsets to lessen the impact of their carbon footprint.
“With the urgency of climate change, we are well focused on providing consumers—individuals and businesses—with the ability to reduce their environmental footprint,” Robinson explains. “One of our latest initiatives is a cryptocurrency offering, Terrapass Coin. We know customers want more control and visibility over their purchases, especially with something as intangible as carbon offsets. Cryptocurrency is something a customer can buy, sell, or trade, and it’s a hot market right now. Introducing this digital asset gives customers control over the carbon offsets they purchase and a better connection with the environmentally sustainable projects they’re supporting.”
Something else she’s proud of is working closely with sales and supporting what she calls the “lifeblood of our company.” Robinson likes to refute the belief that legal is the antithesis of the sales department, and she does what she can to help them achieve their goals.
“It’s up to me to get things turned around quickly and ensure that I’m not the bottleneck when we’re trying to sign up a new vendor, get them in store, and get them selling our product,” she notes. “I take pride in being quick, being diligent, and thinking creatively.”
All in all, Robinson takes pride in the role she plays to facilitate Just Energy’s ability to bring its core electricity and natural gas commodities, energy-efficient solutions, and evolving sustainable options to a broad range of consumers.
“I am proud of what Just Energy has been able to achieve, and I look forward to doing what I can to help the company as well as my teammates succeed,” Robinson enthuses. “I’m excited about what the future holds!”
In addition to her great work at Just Energy, Christianne Sanchez Robinson regularly provides legal services to those who need it most. She volunteers for Houston Volunteer Lawyers, working mostly on family law cases.
To help one client—a woman seeking a divorce from her husband, who had been in jail for years—Robinson had to learn the dynamics of serving papers to someone in prison. She also volunteers her time answering legal questions on the phone, offering advice, and guiding people on the right path.
“It’s very different from my day-to-day in-house. I think it’s important to train your brain in different ways so you don’t get stuck,” she says. “It’s really rewarding to help people navigate the legal system.”
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“I try to lead by example and be very open. Anytime my direct report, my paralegal, or anyone needs me, my door is open.”
You are a true example of how a great collaborator really makes a business partnership successful.
Smart Circle congratulates you on your achievement.
IT’S A DAILY ROUTINE FOR PEOPLE IN kitchens and diners across the world. Something sacred. Something automatic. We pour a cup of coffee, rip open a small paper packet, pour in some sugar, and stir. We don’t ponder the process it went through on the way to our cup—we simply drink and enjoy.
But Kelvin Llaverias knows that the harvesting, refining, and packaging of sugar is a 24/7 operation, and as the director of IT for Florida Crystals, he works around the clock to build and maintain the complex tech infrastructure that makes it all possible.
Florida Crystals Corporation, founded in 1960, is a fully integrated cane sugar company. In addition to farming 190,000 acres of land in Palm Beach County, Florida, it owns two sugar mills, a sugar refinery, a packaging and distribution center, a rice mill, and the largest renewable power plant in North America. Its subsidiary ASR Group is also the largest sugar refiner globally.
One sugarcane stalk holds thirty teaspoons of sugar, six teaspoons of molasses, a quart of water, and six ounces of “bagasse” extract that Florida Crystals uses to power its mills and create biodegradable tableware through
its joint venture Tellus. Getting to the sugar stored in the cane stalk is no easy task. Once the crop is grown and harvested, workers use tools and machines to grind the cane before boiling its juice to produce the crystals that are spun in a centrifuge that turns them into raw sugar that is dried and packaged.
All sugar cane companies follow the same basic steps to produce the same product. That’s why it’s so important for Florida Crystals to compete on technology. “Sugar is a commodity that is the same price for everyone,” Llaverias says. “One way we’re able to be competitive is through IT.”
He’s a visionary IT leader with twenty-five years of experience helping businesses leverage the power of technology to find improvements and drive growth. Llaverias was born in New York City but raised mostly in the Dominican Republic, where he studied computer systems engineering and earned an MBA from a top university.
In 2001 he joined a small start-up, eventually returning to New York to become its application development manager; he spent thirteen years there pioneering cutting-edge software designs as the company grew. He joined Flor-
ida Crystals in 2014 to modernize systems and implement important technical projects.
As director of IT, Llaverias oversees IT services and projects for corporate offices in Florida and agricultural operations in Florida, Mexico, and Belize. He recently led the implementation of a farm management system in partnership with a Brazil firm. The cloudbased software allows them to plan, monitor, and track every detail regarding land preparation, planting, and harvesting.
“We’ve created a tech solution that gives us visibility into everything that’s happening with our crop so we can get the maximum yield, make better decisions, and make the whole operation more efficient,” Llaverias explains.
Farm managers in any location can access the data to monitor how many people and tractors were used in a given shift. They can spot crop disease and intervene to treat plants. Additionally, Llaverias provided the capability to pull data from this system, combine it with historical data, weather forecasts, and satellite imaging, and employ data scientists who can predict how much sugar Florida Crystals’ crops will produce over time.
Back in the warehouse, another tech system enables every part of the packaging process. Workers place bags on packaging lines before machines fill, close, seal, sort, and wrap them. A robotic arm places and organizes the wrapped products on pallets, which are picked up by a laser-guided vehicle and delivered to empty bins, where they’re stored for delivery. Other robotic vehicles tap into an ERP system and check production orders that need to be filled before retrieving pallets and driving them to a delivery bay where humans move products onto trucks.
As Llaverias monitors and builds upon the system, he’s focused on helping Florida Crystals meet its business goals. “I work with our executives on the strategic road map because there are big ways good IT can add value in today’s climate,” he says. This year, the company’s global IT teams are consolidating ERP systems to standardize business processes,
accelerate innovation and agility, and reduce complexity, inefficiencies, and IT costs.
Tech teams are also hoping to apply lessons learned from their farm management system to the company’s industrial operations. Llaverias will manage the project but delegate important tasks to those he’s managing.
“I trust my team because I’ve seen what they can do, and I believe we’re at our best when smart people have meaningful work. I assign them tasks, give them resources, and let them loose,” he says.
His adolescence and education in the Dominican Republic has given the tech
leader a sense of the importance of inclusivity. Although diverse teams were once rare in corporate America, Llaverias sees that changing. The Florida Crystals tech team is nearing an equal distribution between men and women and includes professionals from many ethnic backgrounds.
Today, Florida Crystals is a diverse, multinational brand committed to quality products, sustainable crops, and renewable energy. The company has been growing for more than sixty years, and Llaverias knows his tech plan will enable that growth well into the future.
“Sugar is a commodity that is the same price for everyone. One way we’re able to be competitive is through IT.”
RICARDO RESIO HAS LONG BEEN passionate about serving people, a family value instilled in him since he was a child. Initially motivated to teach, Resio now serves as corporate director of human resources at Morley but says his mission has always been the same: to leave people and places better than he found them.
“Every decision is based on putting people first,” he says. “If we do things right for the people, it will 100 percent lead to better results for the business and everyone in it.”
The HR professional has garnered a reputation for enabling business by driving employee satisfaction and living out his commitment to his own community through extensive nonprofit involvement. In college, he was part of a group that started Sigma Lambda Beta, a Hispanic fraternity still in existence today at Central Michigan University (CMU). Additionally, he has volunteered at CMU as well as with the Valley Society for Human Resource Management, United Way, and the Michigan Department of Civil
Rights. He has also served as a speaker, a coach, and a Bible school teacher.
The son of a union worker, Resio now serves in a major leadership role in HR. “I would graduate college with a management degree, but the union fed me and my family for my first twenty-three years,” he explains. “I thought my degree and family upbringing could provide a bridge to show how labor and management could work together. They play for the same team, they put on the same jersey, but, at times, they are at odds with each other. It was an intriguing space for me to start my career.”
At Michigan Sugar, Resio engaged in labor relations, learning the union’s side of contract negotiation and arbitration while also working from the management perspective. It was also where Resio learned early lessons about how supposedly black and white matters are never as clear as they seem.
“There’s the spirit of the contract, but then there are always the different ways it can be interpreted,” he says. “Any time you
get a room filled with people, no one’s ever going to see things exactly the same way that you do, and I always found that human dynamic fascinating.”
Resio went on to work at Rehmann, where he was able to build out an HR team from the ground up and eventually receive certification as a senior professional in HR by the Human Resource Certification Institute. He then moved into manufacturing at Merrill Technologies, where he attained a project management planning certification. Now, at Morley—a Michigan-based family business that provides professional services to some of the world’s top companies—Resio continues to build out his skill set as the corporate director of HR.
Resio says that coming to Morley provided a unique change of pace. “Usually I’m the one pushing and providing articles and books for management,” he says, laughing. “When I got here, they gave me a whole library to read.”
Culture isn’t just talked about at Morley—it’s lived. The company has been around for 158 years, and Resio says the chance to drive change while also celebrating such a strong culture is an opportunity he’s taken on with excitement.
According to Resio, the strength of Morley’s culture rests on a word that some businesses shy away from: family. “People may not like to say it because it sounds disingenuous, but at Morley, we want our people to experience our family-comes-first values and that we’re taking care of each other and enriching each other’s lives,” he emphasizes.
That means understanding that all Morley family members each bring their own perspective and challenges to their role. Morley leadership can get the best from their people by trusting their associates, Resio says, and by demonstrating that the business is there for them in bad times as well as good.
“Embracing people’s uniqueness leads to a more understanding business as well as one able to meet the needs of a diverse client base.”
Resio has the same goal for Morley that he’s had for every company he’s worked for. “I want Morley to be on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For,” the HR director says matter-of-factly. The business is currently looking to publish an updated mission, vision, and values that it calls “The Morley Gold Standard.” It’s a strong statement of principles designed to support its diverse workforce and further unite its 2,700 associates.
In partnership with both operations and marketing, Resio’s HR team is also working to map out the associate experience, including the hiring process. “We’re examining what might be barriers to entry and how to remove them,” Resio explains, “to find great people faster and hold onto great people longer. We want to make sure we’re providing a welcoming and engaging environment from the candidate experience onward into the associate journey.”
Resio says he’s indebted to Morley’s founder, the late Louis Joseph Furlo, Sr., and the advice he provided the HR leader upon assuming his role. “He told me that he wanted HR to be the kindest department to his people,” Resio remembers. “What struck me most was that he called them his people, a family. I strive every day to continue that fantastic example given to me.”
Kindness has been in greater and greater demand as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Resio says Morley’s investment in its human capital management system, its increasing commitment to diversity and inclusivity, and the transition to a hybrid workforce are additional signs that the company is dedicated to empowering people to be their best selves at work. It’s the right thing to do, Resio says, and the right thing to do leads to the best outcomes for everyone.
“I want Morley to be on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For.”
WILL GRANT
PALIG was recognized as one of the best-managed companies in the United States just a month after facing down a cyberattack that required the New Orleans-based company to take its systems completely offline while dealing with the data breach.
In March 2021, PALIG went public with information about the “data incident,” which included the exposure of a small percentage of policyholder and beneficiary information such as names, addresses, and dates of birth. The attack had occurred on February 19, 2021, and cybercrime group REvil claimed responsibility for it.
When PALIG became aware of the attack on the morning of the 19, the organization sent messages to employees telling them to unplug their computers and other devices to minimize the potential risk of further exposure.
The incident required the company to take nearly all of its systems offline and created a headache for phone support specialists working to help policyholders with prescription orders and other health benefits. PALIG
worked to bring systems back online as quickly and responsibly as possible.
In reaction to the data incident, PALIG engaged third-party consultants and security experts to investigate exactly what went wrong and to work to prevent another breach in the future. The company also offered additional security services to individuals who may have been affected by the breach, though there was no evidence any information had been used fraudulently in the interim.
Despite the early 2021 headache, PALIG was able to find reason to celebrate when it was selected as a 2021 US Best Managed Company. The program is sponsored by Deloitte Private as well as the Wall Street Journal, and recognizes outstanding US private companies along with the achievements of their management teams.
“We are very proud to be named a US Best Managed Company as it is a testament of our disciplined approach to executing our corporate strategy and continuing to deliver on our commitment to our policyholders
Early
proved to be a rollercoaster for Pan-American Life Insurance Group (PALIG), an organization that has prided itself on providing stability for people and businesses for more than 110 years.
during a time of changing needs,” said José S. Suquet, president, CEO, and chairman of the board, in a prepared statement. “Guided by the steadfast commitment of our PALIG team across the Americas, who were each relentless in the face of challenge, we are emerging stronger and positioned for continued growth and opportunities.”
The award is yet another in a career of highlights for multidecade veterans like Vice President and Associate General Counsel Carlos Adame, who has been with PALIG since 1989. Adame has cause to celebrate PALIG’s US-based award, but the lawyer also has a Mexican law degree, which makes him a key asset in operating outside of North America in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Adame’s long tenure with the company is a testament to the culture and accomplishments of PALIG, which the recent award highlights.
Applicants were chosen by a panel of judges who focused on four key areas: strategy, ability to execute, corporate culture, and financial performance. The fact that PALIG succeeded in all of these areas while also dealing with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic makes the accomplishment all the more significant.
While a data breach is a terrible way to start a year, PALIG has been able to not only successfully navigate out of a difficult situation but also thrive—building on its history of more than a century of offering its customers both security and stability.
Icaza, González-Ruiz & Alemán congratulates Carlos Adame on this well-deserved recognition! We are proud to be part of Carlos and Pan-American Life Insurance Group’s success, providing them with legal services for over thirty years. Icaza is a full-service law firm with headquarters in Panama and offices in South America, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Visit icazalaw.com for more information on our firm.
YOUR FULL SERVICE LAW FIRM
IN CENTRAL AMERICA IS READY.
of the selection process consisted of interviewing for internships, and Reyes was selected and subsequently completed an internship in the corporate tax department of Time Warner.
ALEXANDER REYES IS A PARTNER AND leader of the financial services industry practice at Citrin Cooperman, one of the nation’s largest professional services firms. It’s an impressive job for anyone, but for Reyes, a Latino who grew up in the Bronx and attended public school, what he has achieved holds special meaning. Reyes says it comes down to three things: being passionate about what you do, believing in yourself, and taking advantage of the opportunities presented.
The position holds meaning for Reyes because he can remember a time when he
never knew financial services was an option for someone like him. In high school, he enrolled in a special program that exposed him to a career in medicine, but he quickly realized he did not have a passion for it. It was at Fordham University where Reyes began to develop a real passion for numbers, mathematics, and science, and also where his mentor suggested that he apply for INROADS, a nonprofit organization that provides career resources and opportunities to ethnically diverse students.
The application process for INROADS was highly rigorous, Reyes notes. The last step
But INROADS did more than just expose Reyes to the world of finance. Reyes says his involvement with the organization and other mentors helped him understand both the incredible opportunity that existed in professional services and the exposure to senior leadership in corporate America that such opportunities give one at a very young age.
This epiphany put Reyes on a new track and energized him to focus more seriously on developing the personal networks and educational training he would need to succeed. He joined Beta Alpha Psi, an accounting society, and other similar academic and social groups.
With good mentors in place, Reyes just needed a bit of good luck. He graduated with an offer from EY and started his career as a staff
Since breaking into accounting, Alexander Reyes has helped the Citrin Cooperman financial services industry practice expand its geographic footprint, experience double-digit growth each year, and come out strong post-pandemic
member working in its banking and capital markets practice. Early in his career, he joined the New York chapter of ALPFA (Association of Latino Professionals For America) and met many other Latinos in the profession with a passion for becoming future leaders in the profession. This core group, which he describes as his board of advisors, are still very close friends, colleagues, and clients today.
Reyes continued strengthening his skills and growing professionally, and by 2008 he had become a senior manager. He had aspirations of becoming a partner, but given the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 and the overall subprime mortgage crisis, that did not look promising.
Reyes was presented with an opportunity to work with a member firm of EY Global at the time. After much thought, he took the role—and excelled, working with clients in the middle market and driving business. A short time later, Reyes was promoted to partner.
All along the way, Reyes developed a reputation for completing good work. While he was doing well, he wanted to take on something a bit more entrepreneurial. That led him to Citrin Cooperman in 2017. Reyes joined to help the organization strengthen and grow its financial services practice.
“I bet on myself when I left my previous firm because I knew I had what it takes to contribute to overall strategy, take on a larger leadership role, and bring a perspective that would help grow the financial industry practice for Citrin Cooperman,” he says. “I wanted the chance to have a seat at the table and provide impact on a whole new level.”
Over the past five years, Reyes has done all he can to seize the opportunity. He’s helped build out the Citrin Cooperman financial services market strategy in the US and, over the last four years, has seen the company both expand into new geographies like the West Coast and build a stronger brand by focusing on exceeding client expectations and being a true trusted business advisor. These activities, and others, have brought double-digit growth to the practice in each of the past four years.
Although Reyes has done a lot to make an impact, the overall vision comes directly from the top. “We have a great management team that sets the tone for something we are all an active part of,” he says. “Big things happen when people understand their role and execute a detailed plan together.”
Leaders like Reyes work to filter that plan to their teams and practice areas. He uses monthly financial services committee meetings to communicate goals, progress, milestones, and feedback. “My job as a leader is to inspire and motivate so we can maximize everyone’s potential and achieve together,” he says, adding that Citrin Cooperman’s growth creates opportunities. Because of his team’s success, Reyes has been able to promote employees to director-level positions, hire lateral partners, add headcount, and expand services lines.
Reyes has his team set up to thrive in change as Citrin Cooperman continues to expand, and that’s been important to its ability to navigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The firm shifted to work-from-home in March 2020.
Reyes’s clients in areas like private equity and venture capital, hedge funds, and broker-dealers were looking for guidance on what to do during such an unprecedented time. Citrin Cooperman formed a COVID-19 response unit to offer information on tax alerts, recession planning, and other industryspecific matters.
Additionally, Citrin Cooperman’s financial services practice continues to expand and serve emerging areas like blockchain, digital assets, fintech, and special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) as the entities continue to be one of the most popular new trends in the stock market.
These moves not only help Reyes and his team build closer bonds with their clients but also helps them rethink what business will look like in a post-pandemic world. “We helped our clients and employees through a hard time, and some of the tools we built and live remote events we offered will
stay in our toolbelt moving forward,” Reyes says.
Now that he’s thriving in his industry, Reyes is looking for opportunities to give back and provide the same kind of mentoring that helped him launch his career. He believes mentorship is critical and stays active as a mentor to future leaders in the industry.
He is also passionate about working with first-time emerging fund managers as they look to raise capital, set up strong internal controls and financial reporting environments, and seek advice on how to set up structures that are most tax efficient.
Reyes also continues to be active in the Latino community and is part of groups like the New America Alliance and the New York advisory council for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund as well as industry associations such as Hedge Fund Association, where he serves on the Global Board of Directors, and the New York State Society of CPAs Private Equity and Venture Capital Committee.
For Reyes, a good life came with good work—and a little help along the way. Now, he’s doing his part to make sure others can pursue the good life, too.
“I bet on myself when I left my previous firm because I knew I had what it takes to contribute to overall strategy, take on a larger leadership role, and bring a perspective that would help grow the financial industry practice for Citrin Cooperman.”
Years
THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, JORGE Perez has always welcomed the challenge of solving a difficult problem—whether in a professional capacity or in addressing his own work/life balance. It’s a skill that’s been crucial in his current position: divisional chief information security officer (CISO) and cyber integration lead for Truist Financial Corporation.
Perez decided he needed to take control of his career after mentors inspired him to take a holistic approach to considering what makes someone a good leader. Another inspiration throughout his life has been his mother, who immigrated from Cuba to Miami with Perez’s father before Perez was born. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother worked multiple jobs to support the family.
“She was a realtor, did side hustles, anything to make money,” Perez says. Eventually, she started her own cleaning and maintenance company. “I learned resilience from her,” Perez says. “Keep going, keep going; nothing breaks me. My mom did everything she could to send me to a private school, since the public schools in Miami then weren’t as great.”
ago, Jorge Perez realized he needed to regain control of his work/life balance. He now leads a high-performing cybersecurity team at Truist Financial, but also makes time for what matters most.
Perez did very well. He credits baseball, which he played through college, with being a “saving grace” that taught him leadership skills. “I was captain of the team in high school,” he said. “I always wanted to lead and to engage my teammates in making our team better.”
Aside from baseball, Perez’s passion was computers. His mother had an IBM PC to which he felt an instant affinity. If baseball didn’t pan out, he said, “computers was it.”
Perez joined Carnival Cruise Lines in at IT role while he was attending Florida International University and learned about cybersecurity for the first time; it became a particular interest of his. After five years, he left for KPMG, a consulting company. His first job there was to perform a cyber penetration test on Equifax, one of the top three credit reporting agencies. In his seven years with KPMG, he travelled globally in support of Fortune 500 companies including Shell, BP, AT&T, Verizon, and Sony.
But Perez began to feel like his work and life were out of balance. “I was travelling to three different cities a week,” he says. “After our first child was born, my wife said, ‘Hey buddy, something has to change.’”
He had two options: Work for a top investment bank in New York (“which would require just as long hours,” he says with a laugh), or accept an invitation from a friend who was a CISO at InterContinental Hotel Groups in Atlanta. In less than four years, he helped to not only grow its cybersecurity team from ten people to eighty, but also to earn the company PCI compliance within his first two years.
In 2019, he joined the bank holding company Truist Financial Corporation on the cusp of what would be the biggest bank merger since Wachovia and Wells Fargo. That kind of “moving the needle” action, though, is exactly what Perez was looking for. “I love a problem to solve,” he says. “Give me the hardest stuff and I’ll figure out how to do it.”
At Truist, the challenge was to lead the merger’s cybersecurity integration. “I was brought in to organize and help integrate all our processes and roll out cyber integration simultaneously,” he says. “We’re talking about a merger team of over a thousand employees providing security for thousands of applications. In addition, I was asked to be the divisional CISO representing multiple divisional CIOs as their go-to person for anything having to do with cybersecurity.”
“I’ve been blessed with fantastic mentors. I would not be anywhere near where I am without them.”
The merger was no easy task, Perez says. “I had to make sure our people weren’t overstressed, and at the same time motivate them. I appreciate that I work with really smart people who like to get stuff done.”
This was not business as usual, and Perez relied on the leadership skills he’s honed through the years. “I’ve been blessed with fantastic mentors,” he says. “I would not be anywhere near where I am without them. They’ve mentored me in conflict resolution, how to deal with clients, and ways to inspire teammates.”
One of Perez’s hobbies is permaculture design, which involves yardwork and landscaping using only the materials you have around you. This is an excellent metaphor for what Perez does with his team members: encourage growth with the resources he has.
Perez is committed to mentoring the Hispanic and Latino communities and serves on a diversity council representing the Truist Enterprise Technology group. He’s also dedicated to establishing partnerships with universities and external Hispanic associations that will provide opportunities to hire more experienced Hispanic executives and professionals.
He also devotes significant time to volunteering. While at KPMG, he earned the CEO Award for excellence in volunteerism, which is given to only twenty people each year in a company of roughly thirty thousand. From mission work building water aqueducts in the Dominican Republic to teaching inner city kids to play baseball, Perez says that his purpose is “to serve others and help make lives easier. It’s part of my faith.”
Empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more Microsoft utilizes technology to build platforms and resources that help make a lasting positive impact
Rob Rodriguez knows there’s more to the restaurant business than meets the eye. At Whataburger, he helps ensure that his team members are able to capitalize on all the opportunities around them.
BY FREDERICK JERANTYOU WON’T FIND “OYSTER SHUCKER” on Rob Rodriguez’s résumé, but that job began his journey to becoming executive vice president and chief operating officer at Whataburger, a popular fast food restaurant chain based in San Antonio, Texas.
“That was my first high school job,” Rodriguez says of his oyster shucking days. “I worked at Pelican’s Wharf, a steakhouse in the Rio Grande Valley near Mexico. Oysters were pretty cheap then, and we sold a lot of them—so I had to get good, quickly!”
Rodriguez soon progressed to busboy, server, and bartender—and actually became a manager before he even graduated from high school. From there, his career in the restaurant industry only grew.
According to Rodriguez, two key stops in his journey were his stints at Steak and Ale and at Romano’s Macaroni Grill. “Norman Brinker, the founder of Steak and Ale, was one of my mentors,” he explains. “That’s where I really cut my teeth on leadership and operational excellence. Norman eventually formed Brinker International—an umbrella
for many different restaurants—and I spent ten years at Brinker.”
In 2002, Rodriguez joined Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, which then operated TGI Fridays as well as a cruise line, a hospitality division, and other restaurants. Rodriguez was frequently away from home, though, and as a single dad of two daughters—one with
significant health challenges—he soon realized he needed to make a change. He found the fit he was looking for at Whataburger, which he joined in 2006 as director of operations for the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
“Whataburger welcomed me, and I found that my values and theirs were well aligned,” says the EVP. “Before joining Whataburger, I had arranged for a family trip to Disney World. I wasn’t entitled to vacation time yet, but I was still granted a week off with pay for the event. It was a wonderful time for all of us, especially for my daughter Cami.”
Unfortunately, that was Cami’s last major trip: she passed away a few weeks later, just short of her twelfth birthday, as a result of complications from a surgery. Coping with that loss wasn’t easy, but Rodriguez found solace in both his Catholic faith and his family’s support.
As Rodriguez explains, he owes much of his determination to succeed—and many of his philosophies as a leader—to his family, particularly his father. “I came home from third grade one day and announced that the teacher had said we’d go to fourth grade as
“[My father] told me to always remember that I needed [my team] more than they needed me, and to treat them accordingly. That’s one of the smartest things I ever heard.”
long as we tried our best,” Rodriguez recalls. “The next day, he took me to school and marched into the principal’s office, where he demanded—in very loud Spanish—to know why the teacher was filling my head with the idea that ‘trying’ would be good enough. He insisted that I had to learn what was required before moving into fourth grade, because it was the only way I’d ever be a success.
“At the time, I thought he was acting like a jerk,” he continues with a chuckle. “Years later, I realized he was right.”
The elder Rodriguez also shared some hard-earned wisdom with his son about what it really means to be a leader.
“When I became manager at the Pelican Wharf, he was really pleased—but then he
pointed out that, as manager, I’d be evaluated on how my team performed,” Rodriguez notes. “He told me to always remember that I needed them more than they needed me, and to treat them accordingly. That’s one of the smartest things I ever heard.”
Rodriguez puts that lesson into practice every day as Whataburger’s “chief encouragement officer.” He strives to support his team members and also advocates for the brand itself. “However, being the chief operating officer, my primary role is to understand board performance measures and align teams to achieve and exceed these measures,” Rodriguez says.
“Many times, people hear ‘fast food’ and can’t get past the image of someone flipping
Rob Rodriguez EVP and COO Whataburgerburgers. I like to point out that opportunities abound in the business,” he continues. “Leaders run multimillion-dollar operations— the average volume of our stores exceeds $3 million annually—and are in charge of more than sixty people. It takes commitment, but each person who succeeds can encourage and influence many others.”
But Rodriguez’s enthusiasm as chief encouragement officer never strays into anything that could be called exaggeration. In fact, one of his favorite leadership philosophies is to simply “tell the truth.”
“Sometimes, when you are developing people, you need to tell them when their actions didn’t meet expectations or come up to standards,” he says. “A good leader will not avoid that situation, and will focus on correcting that behavior without being discouraging. Tell someone they need to try again, or ask for their feedback on correcting the situation.”
According to Rodriguez, one of the most important things that people need to be honest about is resilience: giving up is easy, he says, but that doesn’t make it the right choice.
“Many people believe, ‘This is my lot in life, and I can’t do anything about it,’” he remarks. “It would have been easy for me to fall into that trap: I didn’t have much growing up, my parents didn’t speak English, and I didn’t have a privileged childhood. But even people who have been very blessed can feel that way.
“If you want to be successful, you must open your eyes to the opportunities around you, and be optimistic,” he continues. “We all have a little devil and a little angel on our shoulders. The angel tells us we can, and the devil says we can’t. But I believe the Lord made all of us to be exceptional, and that we have everything we need to be successful—if we only look for it.”
Business deals and retail cycles may intimidate some in-house lawyers, but Miguel Hernandez is accustomed to the fire. Henry’s general counsel grew up working in his parents’ restaurant and is bringing valuable life lessons from the kitchen to the corporation.
The respected lawyer reports directly to the CEO of Henry and is using his expertise to manage risk, form business partnerships, and influence strategy at the leading building products manufacturer. He was educated at Loyola Law School, trained at top LA firms, and named a Southern California Rising Star by Super Lawyers—but Hernandez learned the most important lessons about life and business from his parents.
In the late 1970s, Hernandez’s mother, Teresita, started selling menudo out of their house in East Los Angeles. He remembers watching as her loyal customers passed popular burrito stands and other nearby options to line up for her brothy Mexican soup filled with lime, onions, and red chili pepper. When the burrito stand around the corner went up for sale, Teresita used her modest profit to buy it. By 1983, the Hernandez family had established a full-service Mexican restaurant: Teresita’s Restaurant.
Authentic recipes that originated in her native Teúl de Gonzalez Ortega made Teresita’s a local hotspot that attracted local politicians, police chiefs, and celebrity regulars like actress and former Revlon model Lauren Hutton. Over the years, most members of the family, including Hernandez himself, have worked there. He started bussing tables at
age eight and later became a dishwasher, prep cook, and manager.
Hernandez says the experience helped him develop firsthand knowledge and skills about running a business that you can’t learn in textbooks. “My mom managed and motivated her staff every day in her attempt to provide quality meals and a memorable experience. Working in a family-owned restaurant with parents, siblings, and family showed me how to work in a fast-paced environment, collaborate, communicate, and problem solve, all while creating the right customer experience,” Hernandez explains. “Those are important skills for every business, no matter the size.”
The life lessons came from both parents. His father poured himself into a demanding factory job to provide for his family. They viewed Teresita’s Restaurant as a way to provide opportunity and stability for the family while contributing to the community by providing jobs, scholarships and through other philanthropic endeavors. In 2021, business titan Mike Bloomberg kicked off his United States presidential campaign there with an endorsement from former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
When they weren’t cooking up platillos tradicionales, the Hernandez family was out in the community. “My parents pushed
After more than twenty years in his industry, Miguel Hernandez is exactly where he wants to be.
We’re always grateful to partner with someone like Miguel Hernandez, whose foresight, energy and creativity perfectly match our firm’s core principles.
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“I saw becoming a lawyer as a way to combine my intellect with my desire to impact the world and give back like my parents raised me to do.”
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education, culture, and our Mexican heritage as much as they did hard work,” Hernandez recalls. He and his siblings all went to private school and learned to play instruments. On weekends, Teresita took Hernandez and his siblings to perform impromptu recitals at local senior centers. Afterwards, they spent time getting to know the residents over pastries from the restaurant.
Hernandez studied political science and classical music. Upon graduation, he joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. and spent a year teaching music and ESL to at-risk youth in Brooklyn, New York. Eventually, he decided to go to law school. “I saw becoming a lawyer as a way to combine my intellect with my desire to impact the world and give back like my parents raised me to do,” he says. “And I knew that would make them proud.”
Working for demanding partners at big law firms helped Hernandez deepen his legal expertise and sharpen his people skills. When a minority counsel program that paired inside and outside lawyers connected him to Bank of America, the bank became his first major client. Suddenly, Hernandez was seen as someone who could win substantial business. He was on his way.
In 2013, Hernandez joined Henry as a director of product liability. Because he grew up helping his father with repairs at home and at the restaurant, the transition to a building materials company was an easy one. Hernandez also has a personal history with the Henry brand, which he used with his father while making these very repairs. His time at Teresita’s also taught him how to engage with politicians, celebrity guests, and blue-collar line cooks. “I use my life experience to interact with all levels of workers, groups, leaders, and managers in every sector from the janitor to the CEO,” he says.
Over the past nine years, Hernandez has broadened his responsibilities. As general counsel, his responsibilities have grown to include managing all litigation, transactional matters, warranty, compliance, and risk management. In 2021, Henry was acquired by Carlisle Companies. Hernandez helped lead the sale process, which culminated in a successful merger. He is now working with his counterparts across the organization to manage a complex integration.
The acquisition has Henry poised for continued success throughout 2022, and while Hernandez is excited about growing the business and driving returns for shareholders, he hasn’t forgotten his passion for helping others. In
Flaster Greenberg takes great pride in partnering with skilled and innovative lawyers like Miguel Hernandez. Miguel is an amazing attorney and leader, and his recognition is much deserved.
When you want a law firm that will work with you to strengthen your business, call us.
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recent years, a priest who often visits Teresita’s introduced him to Soledad Enrichment Action, a gang reduction and youth development program for at-risk kids in Los Angeles. Hernandez is on the organization’s board of directors. Things have changed at the restaurant. Teresita, who is approaching her ninetieth birthday, is enjoying retirement. Although she has turned over day-to-day operations to her eldest son, she often visits to prep daily specials, serve dishes, and greet customers who have become lifelong friends. Her husband continues to help maintain the building, and together, they still have a lot of wisdom to impart. That’s good for Hernandez, who says his sons will soon be ready to welcome and serve the next generation of customers. “It’s a tradition now,” he says. “And I know my sons will learn the same lessons I did and continue my parents’ legacy.”
Congratulations Miguel Hernandez for the well-deserved recognition from Hispanic Executive Darger Errante Yavitz & Blau LLP is proud of its longstanding partnership with Miguel and the Henry Company. DEYB is an award winning litigation firm in New York City that has been recognized repeatedly as a leader in its field.
“Working in a family-owned restaurant . . . showed me how to work in a fast-paced environment, collaborate, communicate, and problem solve, all while creating the right customer experience. Those are important skills for every business, no matter the size.”
Kirk Santos is many things: an HR leader, volunteer coach, and trailblazer. He brings all of that to the table as a vice president at Pitney Bowes.
Santos currently serves as chief learning officer and HR vice president for financial services at Pitney Bowes. Off the clock, he’s a board member for Liberation Programs and a volunteer coach for local youth basketball and travel softball teams. He has coached hundreds of children, including his own, and every fall and spring season, he’ll receive inquiries from parents in the community on whether he’ll be returning as a coach.
Santos grew up watching and playing sports (Big East basketball was his first love, he says), and for him, coaching has become an integral part of the lives of countless children. And there are parallels to Santos’s role at Pitney Bowes and what he’s learned from coaching. He prides himself on knowing how to connect with others, how to bring out the
best in people, and sharing his endless optimism that makes him an inspiration for all that have the opportunity to get to know him.
Santos’s ability to partner with key stakeholders to drive transformational change is evidenced in his résumé, the countless recommendations found on his LinkedIn page, and the recognition he’s earned at Pitney Bowes and PepsiCo for talent development and HR excellence.
But in speaking with Santos, it’s clear that successfully pivoting between business initiatives and genuine human connection is a skill he learned early in life. One of the most difficult personal tragedies that he’s had to endure was the loss of his eldest brother, Fernando, in
Kirk Santos’s résumé comprises valuable experiences with bluechip industry giants like PepsiCo, IBM, L’Orèal USA, and Altria, but it’s his off hours that provide true insight into what complements his professional success.
Kirk Santos’s early childhood experiences serving as the family interpreter for his immigrant parents nearly landed him a career in politics, but not for the most uplifting of reasons. “Growing up, I had experienced numerous microaggressions against my parents and heard so many comments like ‘learn the language’ and ‘go back to where you came from’ that I truly believed I was destined to get involved in government in order to help others. To put it frankly, I didn’t want others to experience what our family went through,” Santos remembers.
Santos’s parents didn’t speak English, so he acted as interpreter on their behalf with physicians, accountants, bankers, and any other everyday interactions requiring adults. “It made me more resilient, and I learned how to navigate conversations that were uncomfortable, especially with people who were deeply experienced in an area that I was not,” Santos explains. “I learned how to assert myself in difficult conversations early on.”
And yet, it was one of his political science college professors who enlightened him on the challenges he’d face going against bureaucratic policies and government red tape, which ultimately didn’t align with Santos’s desire to make a difference or his endless optimism. He recalls his mentor comparing him to a “beam of light” who would best be served directly supporting, empowering, and uplifting others in whatever career path awaited him.
“As I look back on my life, I’ve always enjoyed operating in the art of what is possible,” Santos says. “Afterwards, I did a bit of soul searching, and I turned my attention from politics to business, and have since found a way to push the needle forward in the business world.”
an accident when he was barely a teenager. “Suddenly I found myself having more elevated responsibilities and expectations, overnight,” Santos recalls.
“When you think about traditional Latino cultures, hopes and dreams and aspirations are intrinsically associated with the firstborn,” Santos says. “I recall finding myself in an identity crisis as the middle child having to now act as the eldest.”
Throughout his career, Santos has developed an expertise in implementing progressive HR strategies and overlaying them with best-in-class global leadership and talent development frameworks and programs. Since coming to tech giant Pitney Bowes in 2018, Santos has been able to leverage his experiences to enhance Pitney Bowes’ learning and development function.
“When creating an aspirational talent development strategy, it starts with the interconnectedness of all
the different talent processes which creates the best possible candidate and employee experience,” Santos explains.
“Not many companies have designed an end-to-end integrated talent ecosystem like what we are currently undertaking. We are the right size company, with the right talent, and have the right mindset to accomplish this.”
Santos praises Chief Human Resource Officer Johnna Torsone as the “living embodiment” of an empathetic leader who also understands what it means to be business-oriented.
“When I think of my core values and certain principles that I hold dear, I think of servant leadership, inclusivity, and empathy,” he says. “These are behaviors that are modeled by our CHRO. When you have that level of synergy, it makes you want to come to work and give 150 percent.”
Indeed, many of Santos’s partners have made note of the VP’s dedication to the business at Pitney Bowes.
“Kirk and his team have partnered
“When I think of my core values and certain principles that I hold dear, I think of servant leadership, inclusivity, and empathy.”
SHL Congratulates our long-term client and friend
Kirk S. Santos, CLO & HR VP at Pitney Bowes, for an incredible
Kirk S. Santos, CLO & HR VP at Pitney Bowes, for an incredible achievement. Under his leadership, Pitney Bowes mobilized talent with objectivity, inclusivity, accuracy, and consistency
SHL is proud be a trusted partner of Pitney Bowes.
ExecOnline is proud to partner with leaders like Kirk Santos to positively impact lives and careers with real experiences that we’ve co-designed with the world’s top business schools.
with SHL to provide the leaders of Pitney Bowes with the insights to make objective and transformational talent decisions that are driving strong business performance,” says Bob Lederman, account director at SHL.
It’s an odd thing to hear from an HR leader, but Santos says that taking calculated risks has been an important component of his career. In fact, Santos recently took a selfassessment that labeled him with a word he quite likes: trailblazer.
It was that same spirit that pushed Santos to leave his home, family, and friends in New York early on in his career to accept a job with Philip Morris USA in Richmond, Virginia. “I didn’t have a support network, and I’d never really left home before,” Santos remembers. “But it taught me to be adaptable to change, always remain inquisitive, challenge the status quo, and be a divergent thinker. Till this day, it is still one of the best decisions I ever made.”
That experience, Santos says, elevated him from “the minor league to the majors.” And while it’s still unclear if Santos will himself return to sports in spring 2022, it’s easy to see the interconnectedness he sees in HR and other areas of his life: his roles as translator, coach, advocate, and trailblazer have made him as effective in corporate America as he is on the ball field.
“ACCIDENTS HAPPEN,” THE FINAL episode in Punky Brewster ’s second season, aired just weeks after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. While America mourns the death of all seven crew members, Punky rethinks her dream of becoming an astronaut. The young girl’s teacher arranges for her to meet Buzz Aldrin, who inducts Punky into the Young Astronauts Club and encourages her to pursue a career at NASA.
Vivian Martinez-Wells remembers watching the episode from her grandmother’s house in Puerto Rico and sharing Punky’s ambition. Unfortunately, Universidad de Puerto Rico lacked an undergraduate program in aerospace engineering, and Martinez-Wells wasn’t ready to leave the island. She instead enrolled as a mechanical engineering student.
Today, Martinez-Wells is director of supply chain for Barnes Aerospace, a segment of Barnes, a publicly traded and global aero-
space and industrial manufacturer. She leads a supply chain team that is helping streamline the way the billion-dollar company manufactures and repairs engine components and assemblies, as well as airframe parts supporting both commercial and military programs.
It’s a big job for which Martinez-Wells has been training her entire career. After college, she left Puerto Rico for the mainland and completed a master’s program in management and business administration at Albertus Magnus College in Connecticut. She also earned an executive master’s degree in public administration with a concentration in international economic policy from Columbia University, all while designing and later testing parts for Pratt & Whitney’s F135 program.
F135s are the most advanced fighter engines with forty-three thousand pounds of thrust. They power F35 combat aircrafts, which reach supersonic speeds of 1.6 Mach
designing jet engine parts and building supply chain expertise, Vivian Martinez-Wells moved to Barnes, where she’s helping Barnes Aerospace soar through operational excellence
or about 1,200 miles per hour. For MartinezWells, working on the warfighters was a dream come true. “Any young engineer would love to put their fingerprints on complex engines,” she says. “I had the chance to show what I could accomplish, and being part of an innovative team only made me want to do more.”
After five years, Martinez-Wells stepped out of the F135 program to manage logistics. She worked hand-in-hand with leaders in the Indonesian and Chilean air forces to support products in the field. This customer-facing role helped the rising star develop broad capabilities and leadership skills. She then moved into the supply chain world and started purchasing the parts she had once designed.
The transition put Martinez-Wells on a new path. She flourished in supply chain, and although she had been with Pratt & Whitey for more than a decade, she wanted to learn other parts of the industry. “I’m naturally curious and wanted to try a different sized company and get involved in different parts of the business,” she explains.
That led her to join Barnes in 2013. She started in sales, moved to contracts, and in 2019, the company needed a new director of global supply chain operations.
It was a natural fit, and Martinez-Wells stepped in to transform the function and implement an operational excellence mindset that changed how Barnes does business. “I wanted to make supply chain more than a one-off project,” she says. “Supply chain can unlock huge benefits and efficiencies, but only when there is purpose and structure, so everything is working together.”
Changing legacy systems can be challenging, and some individuals tagged for the new team chose to leave for other opportunities. This created some unwelcome gaps in the plan and gave Martinez-Wells the chance to build a supply chain team from the ground up. “Some leaders in our industry only hire professionals with aerospace experience, but that limits your success. Supply chain is a transferable skill set, and we benefit from a diverse pool of talent,” she says. In her early months, Martinez-Wells brought in people from controls, automotive, and other industries to introduce a different perspective to aerospace.
With her hand-selected team in place, Martinez-Wells was ready to achieve operational excellence to consistently deliver Barnes’ value to its customers. Along with her peer executives, she led the team through working sessions and performed deep dives to define and streamline value streams. The team started to reap the benefits of driving operational excellence across the business, improving quality and performance while developing an unparalleled customer experience.
When the pandemic hit, Barnes’ supply chain team took advantage of the unexpected slowdown to get its organization and structure under control while maturing in its operational excellence journey. It then prioritized leveraging digital innovation opportunities through operations and business processes by investing in smart connected technology and enhanced business solutions. In 2022, Martinez-Wells plans to leverage this technology to find a competitive advantage, continue to enhance the customer experience, and boost growth through greater investment in digital improvement.
Whether she’s at Barnes’ headquarters or away from the office, Martinez-Wells is focused on exploring her passion for service, especially within the Hispanic community. She has helped organize professional development sessions through organizations like the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and mentor young women at CREC Academy of Aerospace and Engineering. Martinez-Wells leads by example as she rises in a male-dominated industry, showing her young daughter that anything is possible for women in the STEM fields.
“Any young engineer would love to put their fingerprints on complex engines. I had the chance to show what I could accomplish, and being part of an innovative team only made me want to do more.”
Cardinal Group Management has gone from regional real estate player to national powerhouse. Eddie Moreno has grown right alongside the company he helps lead.
LIKE MOST YOUNG PEOPLE, EDDIE
Moreno had a few side gigs during college. He served coffee, worked at a package and shipping store, and sold water outside music venues. But then Moreno found a job he knew he could turn into a career.
During his sophomore year in college, the business and finance major landed his first leasing agent position in the multifamily industry thanks to a close family friend. Soon, he moved to a team that specialized in leaseups in the Austin, Texas, area. By the time he graduated, he was managing the lease-up of a new luxury apartment community.
The job was a natural fit for Moreno, who grew up around the industry. He attended high school in El Paso, Texas, and earned extra income by entering data into spreadsheets for a family friend who owned a management and investment business. The early experience sparked Moreno’s interest
and opened his eyes to a career in the multifamily industry.
Upon graduation from the University of Texas at Austin, Moreno took a job as a professional services associate at a student housing start-up when the company had only ten other corporate employees. He spent the first seven years of his career there, learning all aspects of the student housing business. In just a few years, Moreno had developed new skills and expertise, and the company had grown to become a national player with more than twenty-five thousand student housing beds nationwide.
Although Moreno was flourishing— learning about operations, business development, financial analysis, and management systems—the global financial crisis of 2008 hit his company and its industry hard. The company reduced its business development team by more than two-thirds, and since Moreno was one of the few remaining
employees with operational experience, he was sent back to an on-site management position.
While others might have been discouraged by what appeared to be a demotion, Moreno refused to shrink from the challenge. As he worked to save the properties he managed from going back to the bank—a formative exercise in his development as an operator and leader—the words of a mentor echoed in his mind. “Let your curiosities be the strength of who you are as an individual and a leader,” he repeated to himself.
Very few people in the industry understood every single part of the business like Moreno did. He had done financial modeling, new leases, marketing, sales, training, operating systems management, and even facilities. During the recession, these skills all came together as Moreno learned to operate communities in challenging markets. By accepting the assignment, and by
“We’ve been fortunate to attract and develop the best people, given them the resources and tech they need to excel at their jobs, and connected them to fulfilling work.”
successfully repositioning distressed assets in a tough market, he earned the opportunity to interface with brokers and buyers, including Jason Luker, the CFO and a founding partner of a company called Cardinal Group.
When Moreno joined in 2013, Cardinal Group had just opened its Denver headquarters and was a small owner-operator. He became the company’s first portfolio manager and has grown alongside it. Moreno progressed from director of operations to vice president of operations to his current position as executive vice president of operations. In 2018, Moreno became a partner in the business and has since helped conceive and launch other businesses and products within the Cardinal Group family of companies.
Today, the vertically integrated company is a real estate investment, construction, development, marketing, and management firm
with more than two thousand employees and forty thousand units in thirty-seven states.
Cardinal started with the purchase of one single-family home nearly twenty years ago and has now become one of the country’s top fifty multifamily operators and the second-largest privately held operator of student housing in the country. Along the way, its leaders have asked Moreno to build the team and the platform necessary to accommodate the growth of its property management business.
He did that by investing in people. “We always lead with culture and our core values,” he says. “We’ve been fortunate to attract and develop the best people, given them the resources and tech they need to excel at their jobs, and connected them to fulfilling work.”
Cardinal’s culture is centered on its team, the creation of growth opportunities, a
commitment to DEI, a focus on health and wellness, good ideas, fun team events, and great company benefits. Employees enjoy competitive salaries, generous vacation policies, tuition reimbursement, and the option to work from home. Because Cardinal’s leaders value work/life balance, the company has a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. email blackout period. Juneteenth, MLK Day, and Voting Day are all paid holidays. Moreno chairs the diversity, equity, and inclusion committee, and served on the National Apartment Association’s inaugural DEI Council.
For Moreno, it’s all about the long game. “We are very purposeful about leadership development, and we’ve had huge success promoting from within. Our current team members are the future leaders of our organization and will take us where we want to go,” he explains.
In leading his own teams, Moreno focuses on transparency, inclusivity, agency, and teamwork. “Everyone should trust your intentions, despite inevitable mistakes as a leader, and everyone should have a voice,” he says.
Moreno also focuses on connectedness and seeing how the disparate parts of the business and its teams can come together to achieve great things or overcome impossible odds. This has come in handy during the many challenges Moreno has faced as a leader, from growing the business to critical mass to be able to afford investments in Cardinal’s personnel and platform to scaling the business while maintaining product quality and performance. Of course, he’s also managed through the pandemic and has ultimately seen the business through to a point of financial stabilization.
Cardinal Group Management has doubled in size every two years for the past eight years. Moreno says the credit goes to strong leaders who have set a clear vision and a dedicated team that’s worked tirelessly to execute the plan. “We’re doing something special,” he says. “And we’re doing it together.”
BEFORE MARIA MARTINEZ HAD EVEN graduated from college, she earned a nickname that seemed to set her career in motion. In high school, the Business Professionals of American program had placed her at Tenneco Gas, where she helped leaders in human resources by typing labels and delivering documents. She enrolled in college but only signed up for evening classes so she could keep her executive assistant and receptionist jobs. Then, she took her first assignment. Martinez raised her hand for every job and earned a reputation as the go-to person who could answer any question and solve any problem. They called her “Miss HR.”
Martinez has lived up to the nickname. Her entry into professional life struck a chord that resonated, and she’s stayed in the world of talent and employment ever since. “I had a front-row seat to excellent leadership in HR, and it showed me how fulfilling a career it could be,” she says.
She also had dedicated mentors who supported her and helped her understand and pursue different career paths in the industry.
A high school career program helped Maria Martinez discover a passion for HR. Now, the veteran leader is building key DEI programs and contributing to the strong culture that makes Murphy Oil Corporation thrive.
That was important to the young Houston native and first-generation college student. Although her parents worked hard blue-collar jobs and encouraged her to get an education, she didn’t have any other professional role models to turn to for guidance.
Mentors at Tenneco Gas, which later became El Paso Energy, helped Martinez realize she had what it took to succeed in HR. She assumed leadership roles and was coordinating large projects while she was still in school. Before her twenty-third birthday, she presented ideas to the CHRO that were later accepted and implemented. The confidence
boost that experience gave her helped her realize she was in the right field. Martinez continued to advance, and ended up staying at Tenneco Gas for more than nine years.
From there, Martinez continued to work hard to achieve her goals. She accepted an HR position with Cooper Industries and enrolled in a weekend MBA program to take her knowledge to the next level. “I’ve decided to make hard choices and sacrifice time and time again, but that’s what has led me to where I am today,” she explains. She used her new knowledge to help Cooper take a domestic college recruiting program worldwide.
Although Maria Martinez’s parents worked long hours at demanding physical jobs, they still found time to support local charities and give back to the community. Their example convinced her that everyone has time to make an impact.
As a leader at Murphy Oil Corporation, Martinez takes part in official company partnerships with local food banks and United Way chapters. At home, she’s passing down her parents’ legacy of volunteerism by inviting her daughters to prepare and deliver meals for children’s organizations through the National Charity League.
Next, Martinez joined another energy company known as BHP, where she rounded out her HR experience and worked directly with the CEO and HR leadership on key initiatives such as succession planning and employee satisfaction. With her HR skills fully developed, she was ready for the next challenge.
Martinez found that challenge at Murphy Oil Corporation and accepted a full-time role just as the organization was expanding its onshore business. The company needed an experienced HR manager to recruit talent for a new operation. Leaders wanted someone who could analyze compensation and benefits, and they tapped Martinez to attract and retain the staff necessary to execute the critical growth plan.
More than a decade later, Martinez has shifted from traditional HR to work with the CEO and other leaders on the company’s vision and strategy. As vice president of HR and administration, she still works on recruitment, engagement, compensation, benefits,
and succession planning, but her emerging passion lies in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“We’ve put in the work to integrate DEI into everything we do,” she says. “Our internal numbers lead those of our peers, and we are looking at ways we can influence our entire industry to do more as we integrate these values forward at Murphy Oil.”
The HR department recently enhanced DEI at Murphy Oil through a series of videos designed to spark meaningful conversations. C-suite leaders recorded and distributed short messages about what DEI means to them before inviting all employees to tell their own stories. Martinez says she was encouraged by a positive reception and high levels of participation.
Martinez has come a long way from her early days as “Miss HR,” but she’s still hard at work to import best practices, build a strong culture, and ensure that all employees feel seen, valued, and appreciated. “I love the work that I do,” she says. “And I hope we’re creating a workplace that others love too.”
“I had a front-row seat to excellent leadership in HR, and it showed me how fulfilling a career it could be.”
THE PRESS RELEASE WENT OUT ON February 19, 2021. “Comerica Incorporated Names Juan Rodriguez Executive Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer.” When the news became official, Rodriguez stepped in to lead enterprise-wide security policy, strategy, and operations at one of the nation’s biggest banks. It was quite the accomplishment, and an opportunity seemingly tailored to Rodriguez’s expertise. Technology, curiosity, and hard work were part of Rodriguez’s life from an early age. He grew up in Manhattan watching his Dominican parents carve out a life for themselves. Rodriguez’s father, as well as multiple uncles, owned and operated small businesses at different points in his childhood, and Rodriguez was often asked to operate cash registers or sweep floors. By the time Rodriguez was in high school, he had earned enough money to buy his first game console an Atari video game console.
Protecting financial institutions and its customers from evolving threats is no easy task. At Comerica Bank, veteran CISO Juan C. Rodriguez has developed and is now implementing a robust strategy that is nearly two decades in the making.
Unfortunately, the Atari didn’t last long. The video game system suffered the same fate as most radios, televisions, and gadgets Rodriguez encountered—he dismantled it to see how it worked. The destructive hobby became an obsession for the young Rodriguez. He had already encountered a computer during an after-school program in junior high, and soon he had signed up for extra time in his school’s computer lab so he could enroll in typing and other introductory computer courses. Later, when he bought a home computer, Rodriguez found his way onto some of the earliest digital bulletin board forums and taught himself basic coding languages.
It was an exciting era for someone with an interest in computers, as technology was just starting to emerge as a viable and trendy career path. While many students jumped in, Rodriguez was more methodical. His parents, who had experienced political and social unrest in the Dominican Republic, emphasized the importance of work, stability, and financial security.
“Everyone was speeding towards technology, but my status as a first-generation college student motivated me to work carefully and develop a strategy to get on a solid career path,” he explains. Rodriguez met with his high school guidance counselor, started looking at colleges that offered strong computer science programs, and formulated a long-term plan.
Rodriguez has been executing the plan ever since. He received a bachelor’s degree from Sacred Heart University in Connecticut and started his career in an entry-level position while working diligently to earn professional certifications.
As he moved through various employers and industries, Rodriguez was careful to develop new capabilities and expand his area of expertise. After mastering networks and IT infrastructure, he seized the opportunity to build an information security department
and later moved into leadership roles where he managed a team of professionals dedicated to maintaining complex systems.
Although he was climbing the corporate ladder, Rodriguez wanted more. He had his eye on a top position as a chief information security officer (CISO), and he made a list of things he needed to accomplish to prepare himself for the role. He returned to his alma mater to earn a master’s degree, joined several professional organizations, and rededicated himself to continuous improvement. He soon landed a CISO role at a Swedish financial institution and put in charge of all issues related to networks and security.
In 2010, Rodriguez joined an international bank—an opportunity that eventually brought him to the United Kingdom to become the bank’s global CISO, with operations throughout the world. He spent more than a decade developing global cybersecurity strategy for the large, multinational bank. As the bank’s leaders navigated economic cycles and world crises, Rodriguez adjusted his approach to keep pace.
“Every time a business transforms, CISOs has to match their strategy to the change and deliver services in a new way,” he explains. “The cybersecurity threat landscape and business objectives change, and security experts can never stop learning.” Rodriguez’s teams adopted agile methodology, moved services to the cloud, and redoubled their efforts to protect the bank’s customers.
Today, Comerica is growing its footprint and attracting new customers. With assets approaching $90 billion, it is the largest bank headquartered in Texas and one of the biggest in the country. That means Comerica needs a safe and robust technology platform, and Rodriguez says the organization’s commitment to cybersecurity drew him to the CISO role. “I’m here to enable business success while maintaining our important cybersecurity protections,” he says. “We’re integrating information security and cybersecurity into the fabric of everything Comerica does.”
Since his first year with Comerica, Rodriguez has been concentrating on optimizing service delivery and embedding members of his team into every business unit. He’s also working to enhance Comerica’s digital presence and streamline security controls to make the customer experience seamless. In 2022, the team will enhance its services, develop advanced risk management policies, and increase protective controls.
Comerica, like any financial institution with billions of dollars in assets, faces an ever-present cybersecurity threat. The
organization must also protect its customers, who are running households and starting small businesses. In today’s world, threats to both groups are very real. Cybercriminals and hackers use malware, phishing scams, ransomware, and other sophisticated tactics to infiltrate networks to steal money and data. The threats are more advanced and more coordinated than ever before—but the bank and its customers can rest assured that the person in charge of defending against those threats has a plan.
Comerica Bank is a financial services company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and strategically aligned by three business segments: the Commercial Bank, the Retail Bank, and Wealth Management.
Diversity is an important part of Comerica’s culture and that commitment is embedded in our business strategy, celebrated among our colleagues and extended to our community and business partners.
We strive to raise expectations of what a bank can be through strategic partnerships with nonprofits and stakeholders serving Latinx communities by making impactful, inclusive, innovative, intentional, and immediate investments—specifically in low- to moderate-income areas where our support is needed the most.
“Everyone was speeding towards technology, but my status as a firstgeneration college student motivated me to work carefully and develop a strategy to get on a solid career path.”
Kleber Santos learned early on what using his professional platform could accomplish. At Wells Fargo, he’s focusing his efforts on diversity, representation, and inclusion.
BY BILLY YOST
Diverse Segments, Representation & Inclusion Wells Fargo
Kleber Santos Head of
The construction team would routinely hire day laborers on their construction site, and Santos found himself engaged in conversation with a man in his sixties who was looking for carpentry work.
“This man was shoeless, and it turned out he had walked eight miles to the site to try and get work,” Santos says, clearly moved by the memory. “I knew we didn’t need a carpenter, that we would go over budget, and that my bosses would be mad at me, but I hired him on the spot. That’s when I realized that professional success could give me a platform to really help a lot of people.”
And that’s exactly what he’s done. Santos is now the head of diverse segments, representation, and inclusion at Wells Fargo. Prior to that he spent fifteen years at Capital One, where he achieved success moving the needle in the bank’s diversity and inclusion efforts—but it was just one of the many roles he oversaw there.
“The opportunity to focus on this, and only this, was amazingly attractive to me,” Santos recalls of his decision to join Wells Fargo in 2020. “It has proven to be very much what I thought it would be like if you added some structure, a dedicated team, and the support of the CEO, which we’re so fortunate to have. It’s hard to accomplish things in a big company without that, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish thus far.”
Wells Fargo ended 2021 with a higher proportion of African Americans, Hispanic people, Asian Americans, and women in its executive ranks. The bank has also increased the rate of promotions for minorities, leading to a higher proportion of minorities in executive roles.
Kleber Santos has more than twenty years of management and corporate strategy experience—but it was his first postgrad job as a civil engineer in Brazil that helped show him his purpose.
“That is a beautiful thing,” Santos says. “Why? Because it shows the possibility for career mobility. It results in higher representation so that anyone can see themselves embodied in an executive role if they want to pursue it.”
Wells Fargo has leaned into these efforts, encouraging dialogue around equity and inclusion. It held its first DEI awareness month this past year, featuring speakers including Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson and NPR host and author of The Grace of Silence Michele Norris.
The company also held a diversity summit that brought together chief diversity officers from companies like Mastercard, Uber, and Cisco to talk about what it really means to be an equitable and inclusive business.
Diverse executive groups including senior Black executives, senior Hispanic executives, and other minority groups also meet monthly with Santos and CEO Charles W. Scharf to discuss the issues they’re facing and where progress can be made. More broadly, largescale diversity training has provided education and awareness around DEI issues.
But that’s only part of the journey. “You won’t find anyone celebrating victory,” Santos says. “That champagne will be on ice for
another few years because this is just a step in the right direction. These issues weren’t created by Wells Fargo, and they certainly weren’t created overnight. They won’t be solved overnight either.”
Outside of Wells Fargo, Santos serves as a board trustee for the Washington International School, which he believes offers a great example of the possibility of the American experiment.
“You see a rainbow of skin colors and representation of over eighty different countries, and they coexist and play together,” Santos says. “In a world that is constantly trying to use our differences to pull us apart, it’s such a living, breathing example of how diversity is an enriching thing.”
That work involves major investment in scholarships for underprivileged students, a cause that is close to Santos’s heart. The executive grew up in lower middle-class household in Brazil—a luxury compared with the poverty both of his parents endured growing up.
“I watched my father raise himself through education—there was literally nothing else,” Santos explains. “I watched this same man who battled loan sharks and payday lenders still find a way to give an allowance to my grandmother and to his aunts.”
Santos also served on the board of the Easter Seals, furthering their “First Five Count” initiative; it’s aimed at making a positive educational impact in the first five years of life, which are often the most influential in determining future positive outcomes.
“I’m here through the power of education,” Santos says. “And I will continue to do everything that I can to pass that gift along to as many as I’m able.”
“I’m here through the power of education. And I will continue to do everything that I can to pass that gift along to as many as I’m able.”
the top. As general counsel and chief compliance officer at PlanSource, she’s leading the legal department at a high-growth benefits administration technology company with more than seven hundred employees.
More than 3,500 customers use the PlanSource platform to automate enrollment, billing, communications, and other components of benefits programs for more than five million consumers. Barnard oversees a dynamic team of professionals who work together in legal, compliance, regulatory, and contracting roles to help PlanSource achieve the company’s ambitious growth plan.
It’s a dream job for Barnard, but the journey to the top of an in-house legal department wasn’t always easy. It required patience, dedi-
cation, and grit. She had to learn to overcome obstacles, setbacks, and even sabotage. “There are people who say they want to help you flourish in your career, but strong and ambitious women can be seen as a threat,” she says. “I learned to believe in myself, persevere, and fight for what I want.”
Today, Barnard lives in Tampa, Florida, with her husband of twenty years and their two sons, aged seventeen and fifteen. The first-generation Cuban American was born and raised not too far away in Miami, where she watched her immigrant parents battle to unlock opportunities that were unavailable in their native country. While Barnard’s mother ran the household, her father worked for big Spanish-language publication companies. Although her father earned
promotions and reached the management level, certain barriers prevented him from taking on executive roles.
“My father took his career far, and I am honoring him by going farther. My parents’ story and successes have led to mine,” Barnard says.
Her parents encouraged Barnard and her sister to get an education, and the siblings became the first in their family to complete college. Barnard graduated from Florida International University and St. Thomas University College of Law. While most of her peers entered law firms, Barnard choose to work at the intersection of law and business: she opted to go in-house with two professional employer organizations (PEOs) early in her career. Fortunately, she found a key mentor who showed her how in-house counsel can drive strategy, make meaningful contributions, and add value.
When Barnard joined PlanSource in 2011, she was the only lawyer in a company on the rise. She needed to act quickly and create the legal structures necessary for the fast-moving company to meet its long-term goals. In addition to managing the legal
function, she developed a formal compliance program and hand-picked professionals to get her new department up and running.
Barnard’s department was specifically built to bring new perspectives and create opportunities for professionals who are often overlooked in the corporate world. “I picked diverse individuals for my legal department to give people a chance to be seen and heard,” explains Barnard, who says leaving Miami opened her eyes to the lack of diversity around her. Out of the six people currently on her team, four are women and one is a member of the LGBTQ community.
Now, Barnard acts as a mentor to the women she leads and throughout the organization. This is especially important to her given her personal experiences. It was women—not men—who held back her advancement, Barnard says.
“Women are often only on your side until they feel threatened in the workplace,” she says. “I’m dedicated to changing that and showing other women that we should be helping each other instead of only pretending help.”
As Barnard leads her department, she focuses on importing the lessons she learned
early in her career to help PlanSource manage risk and close deals at the same time. Her team meets with leaders in sales, marketing, finance, operations, IT, and other areas to identify those leaders’ goals and find ways to help them succeed.
“Legal is not here to say no when we can figure out creative methods to enable what business leaders want to do so PlanSource continues creating the products and services our customers rely on,” she says.
That mentality permeates the entire department, which Barnard plans to grow to keep pace with the business. PlanSource hired 350 new team members and welcomed eight hundred new customers to its platform in 2020 alone. The company also introduced a new CEO and announced various major product updates in 2021 focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning tools that reduce cost and increase efficiency for HR teams.
PlanSource is prepared, energized, and laser-focused on delivering a great experience for its customers and employees alike. And Barnard and her team have the legal and compliance framework in place to help the company thrive.
“There are people who say they want to help you flourish in your career, but strong and ambitious women can be seen as a threat. I learned to believe in myself, persevere, and fight for what I want.”
Perhaps the ultimate form of leadership is business ownership, and the Latino community is rich with entrepreneurs. The men and women featured here tell stories of risk, reward, and the lessons learned along the way.
190. Ilhiana Rojas Saldana, BeLIVE Coaching & Consulting 194. Janie Martinez Gonzalez, Webhead 196. Amanda Fernandez, Latinos for EducationAfter climbing the corporate ladder, Ilhiana Rojas Saldana took the leap to found her company, BeLIVE, where she uses her expertise to empower and uplift the Latino community
After introducing himself, the professor asked the women in the room to gather their things, save their parents’ money, and head back to the admissions office to change their majors. This wasn’t a career for women, the professor said.
Rojas Saldana did not stand up. She did not pack up her things or change her major—in fact, she graduated with honors.
Rojas Saldana continued to defy expectations after graduation, when she went straight into a marketing career at Procter & Gamble. Rojas Saldana quickly moved up the ladder, securing promotions every other year, successfully navigating a nonlinear career path between marketing and sales, and crossing industries in different Fortune 500 companies until she became head of a marketing department.
Throughout it all, Rojas Saldana grappled with being the youngest executive on her team, and often the only woman in the room. “It was challenging—the balancing act between meeting the expectations of an executive position, managing multimillion-dollar businesses, and being a mom to my two toddlers at the time,” she says. “My family is core to who I am. However, reaching that executive position and feeling professionally fulfilled was also important, so it became a delicate balancing act to manage both sides of my life to fulfill my purpose as a mom and as a professional.”
In 2011, Rojas Saldana moved from Mexico to the US, where she grew her expertise on a global level. Rojas Saldana found that her Latina heritage, and the many other parts of her identity, created pressures that required her to work harder to make her voice heard.
“It also made me feel lonely: there was no one like me, so I was constantly adapting to meet certain ‘standards of success’ that were completely different from what I had lived through and what had made me successful in the past,” she recalls. “This, in many cases, made me lose my voice, authenticity, self-confidence, and purpose.”
Twenty years into her career, Rojas Saldana hit a wall. “I was dragging my feet to work,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine my career continuing in a corporate environment where I kept feeling like ‘the only one,’ but I couldn’t see myself doing something different. I grew up in a world where you went to school, got a job, and then stayed there until you retired. That was my world—until I found ALPFA.”
Through the Association of Latino Professionals For America (ALPFA), Rojas Saldana connected with other Latino professionals who shared similar stories. “When you get to those senior positions, you’re expected to know the answers. You’re expected to know what you need to do. You’re expected to be a superwoman,” she remarks. Rojas Saldana found peers both within and beyond ALPFA who were willing to help provide the answers she needed.
In 2018, Rojas Saldana leaped into the entrepreneurial world. ALPFA’s mission to empower and develop Latinx professionals had deeply resonated with her, and she embraced her passion for creating an impact and helping other Latino professionals find their voices and stand out. Today, Rojas Saldana is the CEO of BeLIVE Coaching & Consulting as well as a public speaker, author, and a leader and advisor to community organizations such as the Rhode Island Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Network of Executive Women, and the Center for Women and Enterprise.
“I remember telling my husband early in my career, ‘In another life, I want to do this.’ Then, suddenly, I
On Ilhiana Rojas Saldana’s first day as a chemical engineering student, she walked into class as one of a handful of women in a classroom full of men.
came to the terms that there is no other life—I either do it in this one, or I don’t,” Rojas Saldana says.
BeLIVE is a professional development, leadership coaching, and DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) consulting practice that focuses on the meaningful transformation of employees, leaders, and culture. “Through our impactful coaching and leadership programs and workshops, we have helped over one thousand leaders of all levels transform themselves from the inside out, maximize their potential, and create impact in their own authentic way,” she says.
BeLIVE also collaborates with organizations to help foster professional development strategies, train employees, and build people-centric cultures of equity and inclusion. Thanks to such collaborations and part-
nerships, Rojas Saldana has established four women’s leadership coaching programs—two in the US, one in Latin America, and one in Europe. “I’ve learned that success is tough to achieve alone—not impossible, but it’s easier when you’re riding the path together,” the CEO says.
Through the years, Rojas Saldana has stayed deeply involved with ALPFA and currently serves as the chief development officer for the Boston Chapter. Her work with the chapter’s mentoring initiative, with the Rising Leaders program, and with the Women of ALPFA’s Latina Summit is just another way for her to realize her passion for elevating the Hispanic community and developing Latino men and women into exceptional leaders.
In addition to her work as CEO, her work in the community, and her many board roles, Rojas Saldana has published four books (despite a long-held fear of writing). One of her books, Extraordinary Latinas, features eleven inspiring Latina leaders and their personal journeys. The book made the Amazon best seller list, and Rojas Saldana plans to continue expanding it into a platform for elevating Latina voices in 2022.
But that is just one of her goals, she notes. Whatever the future brings, Rojas Saldana is determined to continue using her twenty-five years of corporate experience to foster a culture that empowers people to believe in themselves.
“I remember telling my husband early in my career, ‘In another life, I want to do this.’ Then, suddenly, I came to the terms that there is no other life—I either do it in this one, or I don’t.”
Janie Martinez Gonzalez was still in college when she founded Webhead. A quarter century later, she’s CEO of one of the few Latina-led tech companies and is setting her sights on quantum computing.
BY ZACH BALIVA
TODAY, WEBHEAD IS AN UNDENIABLE success: the cutting-edge company offers a full slate of technology and cybersecurity solutions for the Department of Defense and federal and state agencies. It’s the brainchild of Janie Martinez Gonzalez, an entrepreneur who built one of the first Latina-led web development companies from the ground up. In some ways, its story is common, but in others, Webhead is an anomaly, succeeding against all odds.
“I’m first generation of everything,” Gonzalez says. “Nothing in my journey has been easy, and I know much of it comes thanks to the sacrifices of those who came before me.”
When Gonzalez was young, her family came from Mexico to Texas, settling in San Antonio. She took on a lot of responsibility at an early age, and although her parents taught her the values of family, ethics, faith, education, and giving back, she didn’t have many role models who showed her what was really possible. “I learned to be a good citizen, but nobody knew to teach me the real truth,” she says. “The real truth is Latinas can be leaders and change the world.” As she grew and nurtured an interest in technology, Gonzalez remembers wanting to push the limits of what “someone like her” was allowed or expected to do.
As Gonzalez finished high school, she met a young man who was studying English
and computer science at a local community college. Before long, he was writing her poems generated on a dot matrix printer, and when Gonzalez went to visit him in the computer lab, she noticed something—they were the only two Latinos in the room.
Although she felt like an outsider, Gonzalez stuck around. She saw students and professors using things like Netscape and Unix to write code and build web servers, and she was hooked. “I saw the future in a 1990s computer lab,” she says. “I knew I could start a business. And I knew there was a new frontier that couldn’t see my skin color and didn’t know I was a Latina.” Suddenly, the young woman who had encountered bias and discrimination saw herself on a level playing field where technology was the great equalizer. She eventually married the young man, Bill Gonzalez, and he launched Webhead with her; today, he’s the company’s chief innovation officer.
Webhead officially started when Gonzalez was a junior at the University of Texas at San Antonio. But although she’d found the confidence to pursue her dreams, the budding tech leader would still have to face systemic racism. She persisted when potential investors, partners, bankers, and others refused to believe in her ability to start an internet company. Instead, she relied on minority leadership programs, microlenders, minority business centers, and her own blend of passion and tenacity.
The dot-com era was booming, but it was only white men who were attracting significant investment dollars. Less than 1 percent was going to women, and even less was going to women of color. Left with little choice, Gonzalez started her company with $500 cash and a fistful of credit cards. She was turning a profit in under two years, and in less than five she had generated a million dollars.
This year, Webhead celebrates twentyeight years in business, and Gonzalez has emerged as a visionary leader who champions women and minorities in her field. “After
a quarter century, I’m still passionate about innovating in tech and providing real opportunities for women and minorities,” she says. Webhead is thriving in an industry where few start-ups find success—and most that do are led and staffed by white men. Gonzalez says most of her teams “look and feel” like her; she continues to emphasize minority hiring and leadership development.
Being raised in a patriarchal family in a town that didn’t create many advanced opportunities for women has changed the way Gonzalez leads at Webhead. “My background and my experiences as a Latina influence who we hire, how we grow, and what projects we bring in,” she says. She spends time mentoring others and sits on the boards and advisory groups of many companies and organizations. She is the first Hispanic woman to represent the largest, most diverse quadrant
systems before there was WordPress, offered audio and video streaming services before there were podcasts and YouTube, built online journals before there were blogs, built email systems before there was MailChimp, and hired diverse employees before there was DEI.
The work has helped Gonzalez identify and train new leaders at Webhead as she transitions to a new role. In late 2021, Gonzalez announced her latest endeavor: she’s cofounding a new business called Quantum Realm Computing to harness the power of machine learning and build algorithms for artificial intelligence.
They’re the only Latinos in San Antonio focusing on quantum, and Gonzalez has been vocal about her role. “I’m a cofounder, not a CEO,” she says. She will focus on raising investments in a $1 trillion industry to transform manufacturing, healthcare,
of San Antonio as a trustee of CPS Energy, and helped hire its first Hispanic CEO, Rudy Garza. She is the vice president and chair of the innovation and resilience committee focused on clean energy, wind and solar generation, energy efficiency, grid modernization, and electrification—areas where people of color and women are “vastly underrepresented,” she notes.
Webhead has been pioneering every step of the way. It built content management
financial services, cybersecurity, and other fields. Gonzalez created groundbreaking new opportunities for women and minorities when she started Webhead. With Quantum Realm Computing, she plans to continue that effort.
“I learned to be a good citizen, but nobody knew to teach me the real truth. The real truth is Latinas can be leaders and change the world.”
Bracewell LLP congratulates Janie Martinez Gonzalez on the well-deserved recognition she is receiving as a leading Latina CEO in business and government. Bracewell is proud of her work protecting our nation as a leader in cybersecurity and of her service as vice chairman of San Antonio’s municipally-owned electric utility CPS Energy.
Like many others, Amanda Fernandez was overlooked by the public school system. Today, as CEO of Latinos for Education, she hopes to empower both Latino students and their families.
AS TOLD TO ZACH BALIVA I REMEMBER SITTING IN THE CLASSROOM daydreaming because I felt like I didn’t belong. I’m Cuban American, but I grew up in a small farm community in west central Illinois that was home to a university but very few Latino families. I eventually graduated from that university, but my overall educational experience was lukewarm and challenging. I was overlooked because I was Latino, and although my parents worked hard, they didn’t know how to navigate the system and advocate to get the help and support that I truly needed.
Many years later, I would cofound Latinos for Education to develop, place, and connect essential Latino leaders in education. But to understand our mission, you have to understand my story. I knew that my experience was common for Latinos and other minorities everywhere, and that knowledge stayed with me as I stepped out into the world to chart my path forward. Although I had been a mediocre student, I had big ideas about what was possible and I wanted to get beyond the boundaries of my small town.
That ambition took me to the corporate world, where I spent ten years working in places like Deloitte and Hudson. As I gained more professional skills and experience, I started to learn more about workplace equity. Immigrant families like mine believe that if you work hard enough, you can succeed—but in reality, that success often depends on your skin color, the college you went to, and who you can network with.
I was living in New York City and wrestling with these issues when 9/11 hit. That was the turning point, and I left the corporate world to help nonprofit clients at the Bridgespan Group. That’s where I learned even more about how educational inequality impacts the Latino community. I was shocked about the big gaps that exist and how limited the opportunities are for Latino kids, even as the Latino population continues to surge in our country.
I decided to make a move and joined Teach For America. This transition gave me the chance to work directly with the Latino community and see the powerful thing that happens when you put amazing Latino
educators in front of Latino children. It made me think of my parents: my mom didn’t finish her education when she came to the US, but my dad did, and I saw very different outcomes for them. Ironically, my mom worked in the basement of the university—she was in food prep and spent thirty years cutting lettuce while my dad was a university professor on the same campus. One of them had English language proficiency and access to education; the other one did not.
I’m doing what I’m doing today because I know our families care a lot about their children. Immigrants come here for opportunity, especially educational opportunity, and that only fails when they don’t have representation, access, or assistance.
These issues are important, and I am so proud to have been appointed to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, where I can use my Latina voice to contribute to how we make decisions about how and what our kids are taught. I can bring what I know about minority kids and the needs of their families into the room as we talk about these topics, and I look to advance a mindset of equity across our board so we are always making decisions with our most vulnerable children in mind.
Getting more involved in these issues eventually pushed me to cofound Latinos for Education: I couldn’t ignore the reality that we’ve seen too little progress when it comes to Latinos teaching in our classrooms and leading our schools. In just a few years, more than 30 percent of our students will be Latino, but only 9 percent of America’s public school teachers are Latino.
This has various impacts, and recent research is showing something I’ve always seen. When a student—any student—has a teacher of color, positive outcomes increase. This representation also benefits the surrounding community because when you have leaders from the communities that are being educated, they understand the context
and how to communicate with families. Engagement goes way up, and you create better outcomes for everyone involved.
My family came here for education, and what we found is what many Latinos find today. Our kids deserve better, and the only way to make change is to get Latinos on school boards, in our classrooms, and in school offices.
At Latinos for Education, we focus on programs and fellowships that will advance the leadership of Latinos already working in the sector while also helping to attract and retain new educators. Additionally, we’ve launched a Spanish language program to prepare families to be leaders in their communities and advocates for their children. We’ve grown to a staff of twenty people with an
operating budget of $4 million in just four years, but we want to keep growing so we can impact a million kids as we expand into new geographies and transform education.
We need new partners to help us reach these goals, and there is room for everyone to get involved. Whenever I speak to Latinos who want to improve the situation, I tell them that we all have to believe in ourselves. Latino adults were once Latino kids who were probably told they didn’t have what it takes to go to college—or lead a team, or start a business, or succeed in the marketplace. If you’ve been told that lie, you’re not alone. Start believing in yourself, find community, get the support you deserve, and know that you are capable. We need people like you, and together, we can change the world.
“Immigrant families like mine believe that if you work hard enough you can succeed— but in reality, that success often depends on your skin color, the college you went to, and who you can network with.”
International businesses present unique challenges— and opportunities—for corporate citizenship in multiple countries. The executives featured here thrive in navigating cultural shifts worldwide.
200. Joel Silva, Calavo Growers Inc. 204. Alexandra Solórzano Pizzinini, Swiss Re 208. Ricardo Alarcon, Ecolab 211. Miguel Jimenez, Cintra 214. Aurelien Patrick Maudonnet, Helexia BrazilJoel Silva is an accountant by day and a musician by night. For Calavo Growers’ corporate controller and chief accounting officer, both pursuits involve discipline, passion, and creativity.
He entered college as a music major and was sure he had the talent to go far as a performer. But then he had an epiphany. “There were guys who were ten times better than me, and they were struggling to find gigs,” he recalls.
The realization set Silva on a new path. Although music would always be a hobby, it wasn’t the right career. He pivoted to another passion—finance—and has spent the last thirty years accruing international experience at big firms and leading corporations.
Silva inherited both talents from his father, a selftaught musician and certified public accountant. For the young Latino, music was a way to preserve culture. He grew up in south Texas, just fifteen miles north of the Mexican border, speaking English as his native language but with grandparents who only spoke Spanish. Silva, who also spoke Spanish at an early age, says he felt torn between two cultures and was determined to stay connected to his elders through their language and love of Mexican music.
Today, Silva is corporate controller and chief accounting officer at Calavo Growers Inc. (CVGW), the publicly traded food products company best known for jump-starting the California avocado industry nearly one hundred years ago. He’s thriving in a role that brings together the unique blend of global expertise he’s built over three decades.
Silva passed the CPA exam in 1982 and started his career at the legendary accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, where a rigorous training program gave him a solid foundation on how to manage people, mentor staff, deal
with conflict, and manage client expectations. Silva was working on midsized projects when he got his big break. The head of the firm’s banking practice called to inquire about his Spanish language skills. Silva admitted that he hadn’t spoken much in his secondary tongue recently but received an important assignment nonetheless. He was to be on a plane for Mexico City the next day.
When the plane landed, Silva met his boss and learned that Arthur Andersen had acquired the third-largest Mexican financial group as a client—and proceeded to take them public in the United States after others had tried and failed to accomplish the feat. The firm’s leaders asked Silva to stay in Mexico and manage projects across Latin America, an opportunity that required him to draw upon his childhood experiences between two cultures. “It’s important for a global professional to navigate culture successfully and recognize when things need to be done differently outside the US,” Silva says. Although he was used to brief business meetings, he learned to appreciate doing business in Mexico, where negotiating only happens after a three-hour lunch with two tequilas and two beers.
After fifteen years at the firm, Silva found the perfect opportunity to combine his passions for music and his heritage when Universal Music Group tapped him to be its CFO for the Latin American region as it expanded into new markets. This opened new possibilities in other businesses, and Silva later worked at Jafra Cosmetics, where he worked with a boss who eventually brought him to his current company.
“Good musicians learn how to improvise and be creative on the spot, and I’ve had to do that in business.”
Calavo Growers went public in 2002 after eighty-plus years as a growers’ cooperative. Each year, the company sells millions of pounds of avocados grown in California, Mexico, and Peru. Twenty years ago, its leaders established a foods division that produces guacamole in Mexico. In 2012, Calavo acquired Renaissance Food Group, which sells freshly cut fruits and vegetables as well as prepared meals. Calavo’s yearly revenue tops $1 billion.
As corporate controller, chief accounting officer, and corporate secretary, Silva handles all global accounting matters, corporate controls, compliance functions, taxes, and cash management. While it might not seem obvious, Silva says there’s a direct connection between music and finance. “Good musicians learn how to improvise and be creative on the spot, and I’ve had to do that in business,” he explains. Members of his high-powered finance team are called upon by their counterparts in marketing, sales, and operations to come up with solutions.
For Silva, accounting goes beyond numbers on a spreadsheet—it’s a creative pursuit. He’s demonstrated the importance of this philosophy recently as he’s worked to help Calavo navigate difficulties related to tax audits and rulings regarding the company’s status as a maquiladora in Mexico. Calavo disagrees with certain assertions by the Mexican tax authorities regarding its operations, and Silva is working to find a path forward that will be acceptable to both Calavo’s board and Mexican tax authorities under existing legal and tax structures.
In 2021, Calavo announced Project Uno, a plan to restructure the company and rationalize operations to improve results, profitability, and efficiency. Silva is helping unify operations across three business units and has prepared by reorganizing his own department. In 2022, he’ll finish moving the accounting system into the cloud and will work to start upgrading an aging ERP system.
Silva says each day is challenging but rewarding. Although Calavo is facing some major challenges, he’s in a place to use his financial and cultural expertise to find the right path forward. He ends each day at home with learning a song on the guitar or playing the baby grand piano in his living room. It’s similar to being at work—he just has to rely on his training and experience and trust intuition to take over.
We believe that we’re only as good as the good we do. The facts and figures that talk to our size and diversity and years of history, as notable and important as they may be, are secondary to the truest measure of Deloitte: the impact we make in the world.
Bravo!
Deloitte applauds the outstanding achievements of Joel Silva of Calavo Growers. With more than 150 years of hard work and commitment to making a real difference, Deloitte has grown in scale and diversity— approximately 245,000 people in 150 countries and territories, providing audit, tax, financial advisory, risk advisory, and consulting services.
Alexandra Pizzinini lived on four continents before she graduated high school. Now, she unites a team of diverse professionals as Swiss Re’s group contracts transformation head.
ALEXANDRA SOLÓRZANO PIZZININI
has to stop and think when you ask her how many languages she speaks. She rattles off the obvious ones—English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German—rather quickly. But then there’s the African dialects. And she can understand some Italian. And she also explored Bulgarian and Mandarin.
Pizzinini (who also happens to have three postgraduate degrees) is the group contracts transformation head SRI at Swiss Re, a Zurich-based reinsurance company with offices in twenty-five countries. She’s been with the company for more than sixteen years, and in previous roles, she’s coordinated all legal, compliance, and regulatory matters in twenty countries across its Latin American region.
Life as the stepdaughter of a diplomat took Pizzinini around the world. She was born in Nicaragua but moved to Africa at the age of
five, when her mother remarried. Because the United Nations reassigned her stepfather every few years, she spent nine years traversing Africa and Asia. A lack of international schooling options sent her to France, where she stayed for eight years.
Although Pizzinini has fond memories of markets in Cambodia and beach parties in Angola, her status as a third-culture kid created a confusing mixed identity. Africans think she is white, the French assume she’s Arab, and Americans call her Latin. “This is how people relate to me and the category they put me in,” she says. “You have to address and accept it in the corporate world while remaining sensitive to cultural issues at all times.”
While others may struggle to apply an easy label, Pizzinini is unfazed by her multicultural identity. “The world is my home,” she says. There were many challenges involved
with changing homes so many times at a young age. Pizzinini was always navigating unfamiliar cultural customs and racing to make new friends. But the experience taught her to be endlessly adaptable, to observe everything, and to manage ongoing ambiguity—and those traits have helped her thrive in the corporate world.
Prior to joining Swiss Re in 2005 as assistant general counsel of the Latin American region, Pizzinini helped a United Nations–affiliated nongovernmental organization (NGO) draft the rules of procedure and evidence for the application of the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC). When that organization asked her to move to the Hague, Netherlands, where the ICC is now seated, she said no. Pizzinini wanted to stay in New York and practice fully in English.
There was just one problem—although she had six years of legal experience in Europe, she wasn’t a US lawyer. She found a job as an assistant at a small firm, attended law school at night, passed the New York bar exam, and landed an associate position at Cozen O’Connor, a top Wall Street law firm, to focus on insurance coverage and cross-border litigation.
Pizzinini developed additional and deep expertise in regulatory, compliance, investments, and structured transactions working for several clients, including Swiss Re. Although she joined the company to help lead teams in its Latin American business, it
wasn’t long before other duties came her way. As Swiss Re grew through mergers and acquisitions, Pizzinini took on roles in compliance, regulatory affairs, and risk management. Now, she’s leading a team of lawyers and other professionals who are working to bring clarity and efficiency to the company’s contracts.
Throughout her career, Pizzinini has relied on her experiences adjusting to life in different parts of the world. It’s helped her lead teams and navigate life in big corporations. “I had to let others help me when I was learning new languages and trying to get by in new cultures, and those memories have shown me that most people want to lend a hand,” she explains. In her professional life, Pizzinini has sought out others in Swiss Re’s legal department and business units who can help connect her with the new relationships, knowledge, training, or resources she needs to maximize her effectiveness as she takes on new challenges.
Cultural sensitivity enables her to manage others well. Pizzinini has people from diverse ethnic backgrounds on her teams, and she recognizes a litany of celebrations and holidays, including Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, Lunar New Year, Diwali, and Kwanzaa. Diversity is a clear value. Pizzinini’s team has a good balance of women and men and includes people from India, Mexico, Switzerland, Poland, Italy, Greece, Germany, UK, Singapore, New Zealand, and France. As a mother to three young children, she
“Business and work is all about connection, and in a multinational company, speaking someone’s native language can help form faster and stronger bonds.”
speaks often on inclusion, diversity, and work/life balance.
But for Pizzinini, diversity means more than race, gender, and ethnicity. “We also need people from different professional backgrounds to do our jobs well. If we’re all identical in any one way, then we are missing out,” she explains. Her team is a mixture of consultants, project managers, data scientists, data engineers, IT architects, lawyers, contracts managers, analytics experts, and auditors who are pursuing global technical solutions to constantly improve how Swiss Re manages its contracts.
Pizzinini’s advanced language skills help her connect with colleagues and clients alike. “Business and work is all about connection, and in a multinational company, speaking someone’s native language can help form faster and stronger bonds,” she says.
Pizzinini has been all over the world, and although she still thrives on new experiences, she’s stayed at Swiss Re because it’s a place where she can learn and grow. “One needs not have my background to succeed at Swiss Re. This company cares about its people and wants us to use who we are to succeed,” she says. Now, Pizzinini is learning more about innovations in data and technology as her team leverages new methods to improve Swiss Re’s contracts. They may all have different skill sets and diverse backgrounds, but they are creating, innovating, and coming together for the same goal.
ECOLAB WAS IN THE MARKET FOR AN HR LEADER OF ITS Latin American business who had global perspective. Ricardo Alarcon had already spent much of his career all over the world, and when he saw an opening for an HR director for Ecolab’s Centers of Expertise (COE) for Latin America, he knew the role would provide him with an opportunity to reconnect with his family and friends in Mexico and the United States.
Alarcon has proven that he can lead on any continent. His last two roles placed him in Singapore and the United Kingdom and he has either visited or worked in over sixty countries. The HR leader’s track record of delivering results, exceeding expectations, and innovation is inextricably tied to his passion for cultural awareness.
“At one point, I was traveling around two hundred days a year,” Alarcon says. “It was worth it because you learn so much, not only about people and culture but about so many different ways of accomplishing things. I’ve incorporated that into my life as much as I can.”
Alarcon credits his early education with providing him the foundation to always think outside the box. “I was a Montessori school kid,” he
says. “I think it was one of the most important parts of my life. I’ve always been driven by innovation and change, and the Montessori education allowed me the freedom to move at my own pace.”
Alarcon’s pace has always been quite brisk. He initially attended college to pursue actuarial science, but a strike at his university pushed Alarcon, who was already working during the day at an insurance brokerage, to switch not only schools but degrees, ultimately majoring in administration and marketing.
“It was all fairly rapid,” Alarcon says, laughing. “I was working full-time, going to school full-time, and I wanted to get into the workforce as quickly as I could.”
That passion has not ceased. Alarcon worked his way up from an introductory HR role at Telefonica to progressively more expanded responsibility and job titles through multiple organizations and time zones. After relocating to the US with Diageo, the global spirits giant, buying a home, and establishing a social circle, Alarcon says he was the first person to volunteer for a head of rewards role for Asia Pacific that would require him to move to Singapore.
“I didn’t even think about it,” Alarcon says. “It was a big leap, and even though I was very happy in the US, I knew I needed to do it to continue growing.”
While taking on yet another new country and language was a challenge, there is one piece of advice that Alarcon received before moving to the US that he’s found to be true no matter what country he’s in.
“One of my mentors told me that I shouldn’t be nervous that English was the second language I learned,” Alarcon says. “He told me that if the thinking is there, it will come across. I’ve always found that it has.”
In coming to Ecolab Latin America, Alarcon was tasked with evolving compensation and HR practices for a company in transition.
“They wanted to do things differently and to continue developing a truly global perspective of their own,” he says. “It’s a challenge for an organization that has enjoyed continued success for almost a century.”
Alarcon has helped modernize Ecolab’s perspective and approach towards sales incentives and total rewards as a whole.
“The way commissions were paid had worked, but it was my job to help people understand that when change hasn’t occurred for a long time, complacency can set in,” he explains. “That’s usually the time to change, before the market does, and you were not ready for it.”
The HR leader said it was necessary to unite leadership to create a new framework that also provided flexibility, understanding that different parts of the business have unique needs and that a “one size fits all” is rarely the best option.
Kristin Smith, vice president of global sales at Learnship, notes that Alarcon has been a crucial executive sponsor for Ecolab’s Business English learning program throughout the Americas. “I’ve worked with Ricardo and his team for several years now, and Ricardo never ceases to amaze me with his leadership style,” Smith says. “Ricardo’s leadership implementing Learnship’s Business English program has helped give a voice to hundreds of individuals at Ecolab in Latin America, helping them have a seat at the global table.”
Alarcon’s persistence and forward-thinking leadership have allowed him to consistently over-deliver. “Regardless of COVID-19 and all of the economic headwinds, Latin America has done extremely well,” the leader says. “Our sales teams are acknowledged for delivering, and I would like to think that I am part of that success.”
Driving change is great in principle but is rarely easy in practice.
“I like to call it guerilla warfare because a lot of the time, it’s about slowly building momentum and movement to the point that
it’s just too difficult to ignore,” Alarcon says. “As long as you are convinced that it’s the right thing to do, you should be persistent. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a step back and get perspective, but you shouldn’t wait for a decision to be made before you’ve done the work of consensus building.”
Ecolab in Latin America is currently changing its entire operating model, so Alarcon has had an opportunity to help reshape the organization from scratch by providing the tools to make those changes possible.
“I feel like I’ve already contributed to ensure success, because I’ve helped put the organization structure in place, bringing together very bright people to share their ideas and achieve alignment,” Alarcon says. “This is a great time to be here.”
“One of my mentors told me that I shouldn’t be nervous that English was my second language. If the thinking is there, it will come across.”
MIGUEL JIMENEZ HAS BUILT HIS international legal career deal by deal, degree by degree. Today, the senior legal counsel is helping Cintra, one of Spain’s premier transportation infrastructure companies, design, build, and finance America’s highways.
For the average American citizen, the history of Spain’s involvement in global transportation infrastructure is not common knowledge. Companies like Cintra’s parent company (the Spanish multinational giant Ferrovial) emerged in the 1960s, when the Spanish government authorized local companies to enlist foreign investors to fund badly needed Spanish toll roads.
When the oil crisis struck Spain in the 1970s, the government offered to buy back shares, but companies wisely realized their long-term investment value. The early years of concessions left Ferrovial, in particular, flush with capital and decades of experience—know-how that helped the company become a leading player in transportation markets around the world.
Back when Jimenez was deciding upon his course of law at the age of seventeen, he couldn’t have imagined he would end up working in the US for a Spanish company. But early
on in his career, his determination to master English led him to spend a summer working at New Jersey’s Six Flags. He also spent a year in London, where he interned at a UK firm. At PricewaterhouseCoopers in Madrid—his first job out of law school—Jimenez quickly became involved in cross-border financial transactions.
“From the first, I felt comfortable working with employees from other jurisdictions,” he says, “especially at the junction between Spanish and UK law.”
The Spanish government noticed. In 2010, the regional ministry in Andaluçia awarded Jimenez a scholarship to obtain a master of laws (LLM) degree at the University of Sydney. During his studies in Australia, he also went to Shanghai to study the Chinese legal system.
In 2013, Jimenez went in-house at Abengoa, a Seville-based renewable energy company. As lead Latin American counsel, he traveled two weeks every month, closing deals in Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, and Peru.
In 2018, just over a year and half after Jimenez landed at Cintra, he was sent back to Sydney to lead the region’s legal department. A year and a half later, Cintra changed its
focus to the States, and Jimenez and his family found themselves relocating to Texas.
Today, in Austin, the senior legal counsel reports to a general counsel who is also Spanish (the rest of his legal colleagues are American) and collaborates closely and proactively with a cadre of engineers, business analysts, and financiers on bids for US-based projects. “Working with legal early on is essential to the success of the team,” Jimenez says. “A lot of problems can be straightened out ahead of time.”
Cintra’s projects necessarily involve public-private partnerships, and the stakes in those partnerships are high. Today, Cintra is the majority shareholder of five concessional projects in the US, including three in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. In 2016, the Commonwealth of Virginia selected a consortium led by Cintra to finance, design, build, maintain, and operate express lanes on the I-66 corridor for approximately twenty-two miles from I-495 (Capital Beltway) in Fairfax County to US 29 (Gainesville) in Prince William County. With a total investment of $3.5 billion, the project is expected to be completed by December 2022 and will relieve congestion in some of the most traffic-heavy areas in the nation.
In light of the Biden administration’s aims to direct substantial federal funds toward infrastructure, Jimenez is more excited than ever about the opportunities in store for companies like Cintra. Already, he says, Cintra has been shortlisted on a multibilliondollar project in Pennsylvania to build up to nine bridges. “If awarded,” Jimenez says, “we will enter into these concession agreements for twenty-five to fifty years.”
Of course, the growth in this market also means that opportunities will continue to abound for leaders like Jimenez. To his mind,
there is a great need for attorneys with international transactional legal experience, particularly legal experience relating to infrastructure deals.
Jimenez knows that his own development as an attorney is by no means complete. “I’ve always loved to study; I’m someone who is always striving for excellence,” he explains. “The challenge in the US is that there are fifty states and each has its own jurisdiction, so if I’m not familiar with a governmental process, I will dive in and find out. For example, I’m not an environmental lawyer, but I’m always willing to explore those topics, approach the questions in a different way, and give my opinion.”
That willingness to dig into an unfamiliar issue paid off early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, when travelers to the US were banned from entering the country. Unfortunately, that seemed to mean that if Jimenez, his wife, and their two children wanted to visit their family in Spain, they wouldn’t have been able to return.
But Jimenez dug into legislation and discovered a buried clause stating that a parent of an American-born citizen would be assured reentry. “It’s not like we planned my son’s birth in the States,” Jimenez says of his youngest child, “but it definitely turned out [to be] convenient.”
Jimenez and his family have only lived in Texas for a few years, but Jimenez feels at home. “Texas first” rolls off his tongue with a laugh, and a stuffed longhorn toy commandeers the top shelf behind him. But who knows what lies ahead for an international finance lawyer of Jimenez’s prowess? It doesn’t seem possible that Texas, however big, will be able to hold him for long.
Miguel is a creative, critical thinker whose diligence and detailoriented approach drives his success. His leadership at Cintra has been critical to the Transform I-66 Outside the Beltway project, a vital infrastructure project for our nation’s capital, and Cadwalader is proud to be a part of the team.
“Working with legal early on is essential to the success of the team. A lot of problems can be straightened out ahead of time.”
Aurelien Patrick Maudonnet trained in France, England, Germany, and the United States before going to Brazil, where he’s on a mission to turn Helexia into a big name in energy transition
That’s one of the first phrases Aurelien Patrick Maudonnet learned in English. He was an twenty-year-old European living in the state of Rhode Island, and he was working the Wendy’s drive-through to develop his language skills.
It was 2002—a strange time for foreign exchange students in America. One filled with interesting linguistic and cultural lessons. Maudonnet, who was born in France, was confronted with the wrath of some Americans who were unhappy with his home country’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Many customers refused to purchase “french fries.” They wanted “freedom fries” instead.
Twenty years later, Maudonnet is thriving in international business and leadership. And although he’s sworn off American fast food, he says his three-month summer experience at Wendy’s has paid dividends. “Working at a restaurant in the United States to learn business, language, finance, and culture was better than an internship in France, even at a bank,” he says. “And it confirmed my desire to work in a global setting.”
Maudonnet is now based in Rio de Janeiro. As CEO of Helexia Brazil, he’s building and leading a team that will help clients transition to local, integrated, sustainable solutions for energy efficiency and renewable energy production. Helexia Brazil is a subsidiary of France’s Helexia, which has a presence in seven countries and has more than 250 projects in operation.
The position of CEO is the type of role Maudonnet has been targeting since his early years at ESCP European Business School.
“It’s always been important for me to enlarge my vision beyond France and its neighbors,” he says. “Today’s world is globalized, and leaders need to know various cultures,
languages, and markets.” Before transitioning to renewables in Brazil and Latin America, Maudonnet worked in M&A Advisory for Rothschild & Co. in London and Frankfurt. He speaks French, German, English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
In 2009, Maudonnet joined French nuclear group Areva (today Orano) to develop the company’s portfolio of renewable energy technologies across France, Germany, the US, and Brazil through mergers and acquisitions. He moved to Brazil to close a deal, manage a large integration, stayed on as CFO of that company (Areva Renewables Brasil SA), and has remained in the country ever since.
Over the last thirteen years, Maudonnet has deepened both his expertise in renewable energy and the knowledge of Brazilian
“All of my employees are Brazilian, and they now see me as one of them. I’m not a foreigner trying to make a French company fit here. We are Brazilians finding the right way forward together.”
business and culture he’s using to launch Helexia in the region as the new company’s CEO. He started with just a few employees in 2021, adapted global policies to his local market, and recruited fifteen new team members. By the end of the year, Maudonnet had established the Helexia brand in Brazil by signing a major contract with TelefonicaVivo to build twenty-five solar photovoltaic plants with a total installed capacity of eighty-seven megawatts and landing three additional commercial contracts with other clients worth ten megawatts.
Maudonnet has spent 2022 onboarding new employees and leading them to drive the company´s plan to execute current projects and consolidate the existing backlog before moving into an expansion in energy services. “We are focused on local production of green energy and helping clients find ways to reduce their carbon footprint,” he says. Helexia educates its customers about peak energy usage, energy efficiency, energy management, and other tools that help reduce energy consumption and lower costs.
In the next three to five years, Maudonnet says Helexia Brazil will gain ground on its larger and more well-known competitors as it becomes a major player in the local energy transition market. So far, under his leadership, Helexia has been a remarkable success—one that Maudonnet says comes from his solid academic training and international experience. He completed a global executive MBA program with TRIUM, which helped him add operations, strategy, and human resources to his background in finance. “TRIUM changed the way I see business,” he says. “It prepared me to go from CFO to CEO and gave me the confidence to be in charge of virtually all aspects of a company.”
Although Maudonnet still enjoys meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, and exploring new lands, Brazil is his new home. In fact, he now has dual citizenship in France and Brazil. And that was more than a formality—it was a way for Maudonnet to demonstrate his commitment to his host country. It’s also turned out to be an asset in the business world.
“All of my employees are Brazilian, and they now see me as one of them,” he says. “I’m not a foreigner trying to make a French company fit here. We are Brazlians finding the right way forward together.”
As
an experienced global executive Aurelien Patrick Maudonnet was an ideal candidate for the TRIUM Global EMBA program, which assembles a highcaliber cohort of international business leaders and develops them as strategic decision-makers and global influencers. This served well Aurelien’s passion for solving global challenges with innovation, excellence, and collaboration.
At the end of 2021, Hispanic Executive’s sister brand The Alumni Society hosted an event focused on helping Latino leaders learn how to position themselves for board membership opportunities. TPG Partner and Global Head of Human Capital Ben Holzemer discussed this important issue with Esther Aguilera, the president and CEO of the Latino Corporate Directors Association. Here are some of Holzemer’s top pieces of advice:
“Like a lot things in business, [securing a board seat] is about building relationships over time so that people get to know you and where you might be a fit and what you might be interested in.”
“If you’re in the middle of your career and you’re an operating executive, you probably only have time for one true board commitment—in rare cases, maybe two.”
“You have to be on the radar—you want to be in [databases such as] Equilar. You want to make sure your LinkedIn is up to date. You want to make sure you get to know people in private equity firms and other people that are directors. Those referrals are really powerful.”
