We Need to Stop the Referral Funnel Coming from the Same People
By: Thaisa Fernandes
Tags: Latinas In Tech, Recruiting, Podcast, Recruiters, Interview

Where does your life story begin?

I’m an older millennial who actually does look younger than I am. I was born in Mexico City, and I was born into a family that was bicultural, my grandma was American, my grandfather was Mexican and my dad’s side was Latinx. My grandmother was from Puerto Rico and my grandfather was Mexican as well.

We grew up in a family where everybody really embraced different cultures and loved to travel. When I was around one year old, my family moved to Los Angeles because my dad worked for Mexicana de Aviación, which was an airline that went under a few years ago.

I grew up bicultural speaking both English and Spanish,which is why I don’t have an accent. I get asked about that every single time I talk to an American and they said “wait, why do you not have an accent?”. I actually remember being pretty embarrassed to speak Spanish in public when we were in Los Angeles and then whenever we would be in Mexico and my mom would speak in English to us, again I was always very cringe worthy. I really applaud my mom for doing this. You’re just kids when you feel these cringe worthy moments but if she hadn’t really kind of forced us to be bilingual the whole time we were living in different parts of the world, I don’t think we would have kept up with the language the way that my brother and I did if it wasn’t for my mom.

I grew up in Los Angeles until I was about 10 years old. We loved growing up there. We were part of the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts and I was really into outdoor activities and sports, all those types of things. But growing up in Los Angeles in the 90s, it was pretty complicated too. I think people were kind of pissed off, as there was a lot of racial tension which we are experiencing now again, and we actually ended up moving back to Mexico City. We left for a couple of reasons, including my dad had left Mexicano de Aviacion and had purchased a gas station in LA and during the Rodney King riots, that gas station got destroyed. Safe to say that it’s been pretty triggering to hear helicopters here in San Francisco or as I see damage being done, but also just violence against people during protests that turn violent. But these are protests that are stemming from injustice and inequality in our country. So it’s really helped me do some deep introspective work and emotional work of why this is triggering me. I just want to be clear, it’s not the rioting part that’s been the difficult part for me to swallow, it’s the outcome of the rioting that is bothering me,

Moving back to my history, I arrived in Mexico around 10 years old and I was in the fourth grade. I was known as “la gringa” or the American. I had an accent when I arrived I’m sure, I can’t remember and I’ve never heard my accent, but I also liked to play sports with the boys at recess which I really didn’t see anything wrong with either being “gringa” or being a tomboy or playing sports. I just kept doing that, I just kept doing what I felt right and what I liked. That’s really kind of the way that I’ve been living my life since.

My mom, dad and my family were really supportive of this way of life as well, they used to say “as long as you’re not hurting anybody and you’re being respectful, growing and embracing your truth, you just do your thing”. It was really fun growing up in Mexico as well, especially the teenage years, when you start thinking you’re grown up and I remember starting to go out around 15 years old in Acapulco. I don’t think that I grew up too fast, but I think we just started enjoying different parts of what being a teenager was in a really respectful way.

I made a lot of lifelong friends in school, in high school, primary school but also in college. I still keep in touch with a lot of them, my friend group in Mexico is huge. Once I met my husband, he said a lot of my friends look like me. He kind of noted that a lot of my friends are white. This makes me a part of a very privileged socio economic sector there and most of my friends, my family and my circle of influence looked like me. That really made me realize how much diversity was lacking in my life, how much different perspectives and different lived experiences from people from other backgrounds I was lacking.

Not really until I moved to the United States in 2010, was I able to start embracing people from not only different racial backgrounds, but also different parts of the world. I moved to San Diego in August 2010 and I loved the concept of leaving chaotic, crazy, busy Mexico City behind. I like being able to surf and have activities that were more outdoor and more wholesome. Not just going out to the clubs and drinking. I really embraced more of the California lifestyle which I always felt really connected to as well.

I met my husband about five to six months after I moved to San Diego. We met at a bar, and he is a white man from Georgia, his name is Keith. He was actually a navy seal when I met him which is a part of a very elite special operations section of the military force, but I had no idea what a Navy Seal was. I remember asking some folks at work what they did, and one of my mentors said “oh my gosh, they’re the real deal, you should keep them close”. I had no exposure to anybody in the military in Mexico, which again just goes to show how much diversity I was lacking in my group of people.

Five years ago, we moved to San Francisco. I quit my job at the time which was for a tuna company, a Mexican tuna company that was selling and distributing tuna in the United States. I was helping them with business development and operations here which was a lot of fun. I got to know a very different industry pretty closely, but I knew that I wanted to also move into the tech sector. So Keith got a job right away which was awesome, he’s very qualified and of course very smart with an exceptional background. And it took me four months the first time to find a job for a recruiting agency which was working with other startups and this would give me exposure in the high growth startup culture. It showed me how to move and navigate talking to candidates and learning about their background and how I would fit into the different companies and organizations that we were working with. That was really a great opportunity.

What does it mean to be a Latina for you?

I was thinking about this, when you grow up and live outside of the United States, you don’t really think, “Oh, I’m a Latina”, it becomes a real part of my identity. Once I moved here to the U.S. and I often highlighted it to again bring people’s norms of what Latinx people look or sound like. When I do think of my Latinas friends, the people that I left in Mexico, or have in Mexico or the many Latinas from different parts of Latin America that I’ve met here, I think of generosity of spirit, I feel a warmth in my heart just thinking of how much authentically we give our time, and care. We give our support and really just our love to anyone who needs it. I think of how generous we are.

What do you do now?

After a year of working in this startup, I approached a couple of contacts and allies that I had in tech sectors, for example at Lyft, Pinterest and other other companies that I had spoken with a year prior. I had an opportunity created for me at Pinterest as a recruiter, once I broke in there, which was a year and a half after I had arrived in San Francisco, that’s when I started to get a greater view of how much misconception there was around this pipeline problem.

They would say, “we don’t have many Latinas working here because there aren’t many Latinas working in tech”, and I said, “I’m here”. I found it kind of cool being the first one, the first Latina to say “hey, there’s a lot of Latinas here at Pinterest, why don’t we create a community for us?”, or “hey, there’s a lot of Latinas in the workforce why don’t we actually go out and engage them in a real way instead of just putting out opportunities on job boards and expecting folks to apply?”. We know that a lot of these positions are what the descriptors feel so out of grasp that people don’t apply. It happened to me this year, I said, I don’t have six years of experience in diversity, equity and inclusion work, I don’t have this experience and my husband said to just apply and reach out to people you know better. I said, you’re right.

While it’s cool to be the first, it’s not cool to be the only. When I started building out our community and engaging people within the company to say “hey, where do your friends work, where do they live, how can we get good people to engage good people?” to have this referral funnel stop coming from the same people, which is predominantly white male, or Asian male.

I think opening up a lot of creative ways for people within recruiting to actually start just doing the work. I think there was a lot of fear around “well, how do you know how to reach out to Latinx folks?” and I answered “ the same way that we do with other folks”. Sometimes I would add a Hola from Pinterest or Olá from Pinterest which really helped to get some traction, because a lot of people are not getting any sort of communication in their language. So whenever I could do that I would just because I’d rather show up then not show up even if it’s imperfectly. This isn’t infallible, not every single Latina that I work with reached out to come to the company, but I think starting to build those relationships in a nurturing way which is another thing Latinas I think do really well. It really helped me build community and not only for Latinx folks, but with people coming from all sorts of different backgrounds, all sorts of different parts of the country with different experience.

Starting to build out these teams and seeing them operate, seeing them exceed expectations, again and again was so fulfilling. What happens after they’d come through the door, that environment, that culture of saying “hey, I have through my experience or through my education or through my ideas, I have this to add and actually being able to bring it to the table was so fulfilling”. Watching these people grow into their own, step into their power was awesome. Then just start to lead and start to bring in more people, it was just showing people leading by example.

Remember this person that we brought, look at me, don’t even go as far as look at whoever people would just point to me and be “Linda look how far she’d come, how far she’s come, how much she’s done in this area” and really the only thing that I wanted to do was do the work and bring people along with me, so that they could see and realize what do you know, why is it important to feel balanced in more diverse teams and why is it important for us to be engaged with people throughout the process and afterwards, because we’re people, and we’re in the business of creating opportunity for people. So just reminding folks of that work was super important to me and sharing my story being “hey, why did my husband get a job in one month without any of the checkboxes or qualifications, whereas it took me really truly to break into a tech company a year and a half?”. We need to start to dissect it and start to see how we present these opportunities for growth. We need to start by building equity into the hiring process, let’s be mindful of how any disparity could be created in these teams, and try to mitigate that. We have a lot of power and what we do as recruiters and as people in the HR team so let’s use it.

What are the actions people can take towards inclusion and diversity? How can we have more allies?

There’s a lot of fear of people thinking that they will show up incorrectly. I’ve seen throughout my time here in tech not showing up to an LGBTQ event, because you’re not a member of that community, or not showing up to a black African American event, or Juneteenth event, because you’re not part of that community. I would show up, I just wanted to learn.

I also want to make clear that I care. By not showing up and not having that confidence that you can have these conversations because you’re maybe not a member of this community but you have friends, family members or people that you care about that are in these communities. You’ll see how they are feeling during times of inequality or injustice and how can you help lessen the burden of what they are feeling over something that they absolutely can’t control like the color of their skin? I think these conversations that are happening within communities are going to continue happening and I think if we show up and become involved, we can also educate ourselves on how to have these conversations with our people, family members, colleagues, and friends.

It’s so important now more than ever to have the courage to have these conversations. As we’d like to start to unravel patriarchal systems of how families are formed and what the functions are, women can lead, women can be the leaders, and should be the leaders of their families and so they should be able to step into power. We should lead these conversations related that comes from a place of love.

I had a really scary moment where I shared lived experiences and what the Black Lives Matter movement meant to me with my partner Keith and his family who’s conservative, religious, and a military family. I honor and respect everything that they are and what they represent in my life, but I wanted the same respect and the same observance in return. I think showing them through a letter, through a loving, outpouring letter of my experiences are, I was able to capture where I was coming from and maybe be able to be myself, be unapologetically with them in spaces that I felt that I couldn’t before. We aren’t going to talk politics, but we are going to talk about systemic racism, what I’ve experienced in the 10 years that I’ve lived here, and it’s okay to have to repeat myself and we’re gonna do this in a respectful manner always.

Just having that conversation and having my husband activate it immediately. Of course he would, but I was so scared that he might not and I think we all know we’re in the place we hold in our loved ones hearts. I think we need to again step into that power of saying, “hey, this election was really important for me, this is why, this is why I care if you care about me”.

Let’s carry it together, let’s share this burden and do this emotional work together, because doing it solo in a time of where we are now in a pandemic, it can get isolating and I think a lot of people are grappling with issues of identity and self worth. So sending out my thoughts and this letter to my family in June was seen by most as very brave and courageous. There really is no way for me to operate in this life than by being myself.

What are you most proud of?

I’m most proud of living by my values, just showing up and deciding to change the world through everyday actions of love, compassion and gratitude a lot of times and days. These actions are for myself, and that’s okay, I practiced self love and care when I realized how burnt out I was and needed a break from the work that I was doing from overa. I’ve been working really hard and non stop since I graduated college in 2007 which was during a really bad recession. At that time as well, I think I’ve overcome a lot, but I haven’t taken time to stop or intentionally stop.

When I left Pinterest in August, I’m coming from a place of great privilege, of course, leaving a job during a pandemic. An action that I don’t think everybody would be able to do and I did not take that lightly at all, but again, I think one of the greatest acts of self love that I’ve done, and it also just opened up a world of opportunity for me outside. How can I do this work more broadly? How can I grow from and learn from new leaders? How can I inspire others to dig into agencies to really analyze their situations? How can they see what stressors are involved in their day to day and control what you can? We’re living in a time where there’s so little to control.

I’m being able to make this action, to follow through on it and really live by this. I think that is what makes me the most proud. Hopefully one day, my future children, my friends’ children and few future generations can be inspired by that. I think as I made this decision, this world that I see started unfolding in front of me twice, I swear, and it was beautiful. People stopping me on the street to compliment my curly hair, people stopping on the street to talk to my dog, it was these beautiful interactions with my community that I like.

Maybe I wouldn’t have stopped to embrace these moments before, but I think this happens when you activate part of your soul. It’s a spiritual thing, I am not religious, but I’ve found this very spiritual side of me this year and I’m learning to embrace it. I just feel, I like to feel through it and move through it. It’s been magical.

How Latinxs and people with English as a second language can feel more comfortable during the interview process? What are the things that can help them during this challenging process? Do you have any tips?

When I was a recruiter at Pinterest whenever we brought in or would have an on site for Latinx folks, I would try to build the interview process to have someone from Mexico, maybe I would do lunch with them or have someone from the team part of the Latinx community so that they could at least during the lunch hour, decompress and talk to people maybe in their own language.

I have this specific example of a really good friend of mine Freddie who was traveling from Washington, DC for the interview. I saw his last name, so I thought he was Latino. My friend who was his recruiter was out of town, but I reached out to the team and said, “hey can I do his greeting?”. I love doing greetings for people. I went and got it and we were chatting, I showed him around, then when we got to the room instead of just going through all of the technical stuff, I asked him if he speaks Spanish, because I had noticed that his name sounded Spanish. He said yes and we started speaking Spanish for five minutes. We just learned about each other, I always use this example as a reason why he knew he could be himself, and how that moment was such an icebreaker for him. It made him feel so much more at ease, to just be able to see someone else that he could connect with.

I think as Latinxs folks or people with English as their second language seek out recruiters that are Latinx, African American, recruiters who are very open about our identity so if you see someone that you connect with, reach out to them and be like “hey, I’m going to an interview, is there a way that I could meet with you”. Or even tell your recruiter you would love to meet with someone from the Latinx community at Twitter or at Pinterest, they’re happy to oblige. We would always want to offer this up to people, so ask for it. You’re not going to get what you don’t ask for and I think having someone that you can actually have an authentic conversation with, ask what their process was to get into the company, their experiences or how the community they look like.

Once you’re at the company, they’re happy to share more even if you don’t have an interview there yet. Reach out to the folks that can speak your language if they are there, and if not, then just reach out to recruiters, but be mindful of how you do this. I am such an empath, I always respond to people that are reaching out to me on LinkedIn, except if they get the name wrong or if it looks like a super copy and paste robotic message, which I have a hard time engaging in because I definitely know my time is valuable as well. But if it’s a nice message asking for help, it’s really hard for me to say no.

I reached out to folks in my network that I see in these companies, and every single person has gotten back to me saying “how can I help?”. People generally want to be nice, they don’t want to be assholes. Let’s build on being kind to one another. There’s nothing wrong with having an accent, there’s nothing wrong with not being from the U.S., there’s nothing wrong with not coming from an Ivy League school, there’s nothing wrong with not landing that job that you really want to get, there are second opportunities. If you connect and if you really build relationships with people down the road, you’ll end up wherever you were meant to end up.

As a recruiter I always say we’re building teams, not companies. I didn’t build Pinterest, I built great teams, I sought out people that would have never applied to a position there because they didn’t think that they were qualified for it. I gave them time to prepare, I gave them sufficient information to go through the interview prep process and also feedback. When it didn’t go as intended, or as planned, I think being more forthcoming with this information and with time it all works out in the end.

It really feeds into this greater goodwill which is that we’re all in this together. We’re not competing for money in these tech scenes. We’re really just representing, building and showing up as ourselves. We’re adding and talking to Latinas in tech specifically, and I would always meet people at these events and you would always identify yourself as Linda from Pinterest or Thaisa from Twitter. I was always thinking, what does the company really matter? It’s great to identify people if I want to position at Twitter down the road, I can reach out to Thaisa but these companies don’t make us better, we’re making these companies better by truly showing up and utilizing these opportunities.

I imagine volunteer work also plays a huge part in your life. Can you share with us more details about your experience volunteering?

I volunteered with Latinas in Tech on their board for almost two years which was really gratifying. They’re always looking for people to even have ideas on upcoming events and they’re always asking for feedback so I’m volunteering in those types of organizations which are dedicated to increasing representation in those spaces.

I was approached a couple of weeks back by a founder who’s a black woman, her name is Jules and she founded a company, a nonprofit called AFARA, which stands for Alliance for Anti Racist Action. She wanted me to help build out the culture for the volunteers that are coming in and giving much of their time and their talents to what we’re looking to achieve, which is again, to really bridge these conversations between people. They’re taking a really multicultural approach which I love a lot as well.

If you don’t build these company cultures intentionally, it kind of just happens in time, so things might start feeling funky and if you don’t have anybody to talk about or you feel you cannot bring these issues to the table, it can break. This is a work that I’m super passionate about and I really look forward to building not only the culture for the team, but the strategy and the foundations of how we’re going to approach these transformational experiences.

Educate, not only the company, but also people and family. How can we facilitate conversations between families post election? How can we create more leaders and change agents to again feel empowered and brave to say “hey, let’s have a family, let’s come together and have a talk”?.

Let’s realize that we’re where all of this is coming from and where we can actually steer it towards which is unity. During Veterans Day, I was thinking about the concept of family that I’ve grown up with through the years and I think Americans think of family within their four walls. I think as underrepresented minorities communities, we think of the bigger picture and the reality is I learned a very different concept of family through my husband, and also through his work in the military. The people in his platoon, in his training, the people that he was working with when he was deploying, it’s a huge community and just learning from him also just how to wholeheartedly fight for what is right was different. So I corrected myself, and thought that’s not true because the concept of family is not just me, him, our dog Teddy, and his parents. It’s really broad and that helped me broaden my understanding of it too. When I think of family. I think of community, I think of family of people I just met.

I think there are so many organizations that need support right now, not only monetary but it’s always better to give together. If you can have these conversations and give as a family. Give your time, give your efforts, it really opens up a whole new dialogue. I really would suggest for people to have a lot of resources but just find one and engage your family to do it with you. Doing this together is really important, the Latinx community foundation I’ve been part of their giving circle for a few years now, and it’s a monetary contribution and I was at first kind of scary but then when you give together in a circle the impact is so much bigger. It really doesn’t hurt at all. Looking through these organizations and picking one out as a family, it’s something that I would encourage people to do.

What keeps you awake at night?

There’s a lot of things. I’ve always been a warrior, I’ve always had this worried face since I was a little kid. COVID obviously is still very much on top of my mind. I think what’s happening here in the U.S. is really serious and the U.S. is such a huge leader for the American continent, we all in Mexico and Brazil are looking to this country to kind of lead. Lead the way and pave the way, as things don’t get better here, they’re not going to get better in our countries. Seeing the numbers go up in Mexico and Brazil, thinking of the disparity there as well which is really bad here also. I feel there’s a lot of division that’s kind of taking people towards a feeling of hate. It makes me really nervous about the fact that people are so divided and so apathetic.

I feel right now people are not realizing that we’re in this country and on this planet together, there’s really no opting out. So a lot of this stress has accumulated for maybe not having these conversations or maybe me not speaking up at work or maybe me not asking for what I deserved. That one time forever ago led me to have a lot of accumulated stress that I would always hear people say, “oh you look stressed”. I have fertility challenges to be honest, and my husband and I have been doing in vitro for a couple of years and I’m open about it because I know there are a lot of women that do this. I actually got a lot of support from friends that were on the same journey. This was my path and it was so helpful to share it because I didn’t feel alone.

Starting to do things for myself and starting therapy. Just taking time off more intentional to heal and recover, and also using my voice and continue being an advocate, helping to create this world that I really want. We’re going to start a new cycle very soon which I’m really excited about but I worry a lot that my children would not be proud of their heritage, that they would just want to focus on one part of their identity, and I would at some point lose stamina and become apathetic saying “it’s okay you don’t want to speak Spanish, fine”. It’s not okay for me. I think it’s on all of us and I just want to keep of the momentum that I think a lot of our communities have right now in communities of color that came together during the election and we’re doing this together.

We’re not taking credit from other communities, we’re not competing, we need to find unity, not only with communities of color, we need allies and accomplices to do this and I just pray that I have the stamina to keep going. This is a part of what we talked about with self care, put on your oxygen mask first. This is not going to be the first bad year that we have, we’ve done a lot of damage to this planet and I think there’s gonna be a lot of healing in regards to that as well. Also in regards to our communities, the disparities, the injustices and a lot of correcting, and that’s going to be painful for a lot of people, but I think I just want everybody to pace themselves and just find hope. As my friend Jabari said the other day, he was saying we should keep choosing hope, and I do really want us to keep choosing hope.