Earlier this month, we begun a new quarter at Tesla full of new opportunities and challenges. Similarly, LAT kicked off the quarter with our all-member meeting to align on our employee resource group's goals and priorities for the next three months. We were joined by our new executive sponsor, Christina Gonzalez.
Note: Our soon-to-be legacy LAT brand, which is still in use today but will be retired later in Q2 2022 in favor of our new LAT brand.
Prior to Christina, our executive sponsor was Oscar Moncada who was an incredible sponsor for LAT, and we are grateful for his leadership, commitment and support during the past few years.
Having Christina be LAT's new executive sponsor is monumental. As LAT's new executive sponsor, Christina represents the very small percentage of Latinas at Tesla who hold leadership positions. Christina is Tesla's Director of Recruitment for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and a passionate advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has been a strong supporter of LAT.🔥💪🏽
Whenever we kick off the new quarter, we like to take a moment to reflect on the previous quarter. We also like to celebrate our accomplishments.
During Q1, and right on time to kickoff Q2, we launched our new quarterly LAT newsletter, La Voz.
"La Voz" is a Spanish word or phrase meaning "the voice". The digital format allows us to share our stories, culture, heritage, and business impact with one another and with the rest of the Tesla community in a way that feels authentic to the LAT community. Each edition will also have a member spotlight from each of our sites.
Rick Esparza and our various site communication leaders did an amazing job with assembling the first issue of "La Voz" and we're all looking forward to future issues.
Manny's professionalism and ability to find innovative ways to tackle projects and solve problems made him someone that I could consistently depend on, and a colleague whom I could always lean on for advice and guidance.
For future quarterly recaps, I'll see about being able to simply link to "La Voz" for the reasons mentioned above.
During Q1, we launched a new career development series we're calling, ¡Adelante!
The first topic in the series focused on how to manage imposter syndrome and career growth. It was a great success with about 80 members in attendance, and we're looking forward to the next topic in the series. Shoutout to Vidal Gonzales and each site's professional development chair for helping to make this series' kickoff a success along with our first guest speakers: Lizette Bayardo, Luis Visoso and Ernesto Soltero.
As of March 31st, our recruitment efforts during the last two quarters have led us to an overall LAT membership of over 750 members globally.
In parallel with our growth, Yared and I have been recruiting and scaling the ERG leadership both at the executive level and at the member level during the last two quarters. As a result, in addition to Yared and myself, we now have Rick, Vidal and Christina as part of the LAT executive leadership. 🔥💪🏽
Having a diverse and empowered leadership team that represents the LAT community in its full spectrum was something Yared and I believed in from our initial partnership conversations; Rick, Vidal and Christina also agree. This collective vision has resulted in the formation of a LAT leadership team consisting of individuals from various backgrounds, perspectives and experiences at most of Tesla's main offices, such as Fremont, Nevada, New York, Austin, Lathrop and Berlin, including our satellite (remote) colleagues.
Partnering and collaborating with Manny as not only a peer and colleague but also as the Executive Global Vice President of Latinos at Tesla to drive inclusion and culture at Tesla has been one of the most rewarding journey's that I have been able to share with him.
- Recruitment Outreach efforts in New York and Southern California. Some of our members also attended USC Women’s Alumni virtual & on-site info sessions.
- LAT members helped the Gigafactory NY solar production teams manufacture Tesla’s one millionth Solar Roof module last quarter!
- Supplementary to ¡Adelante!, LAT Fremont/Bay Area leadership team conducted on-site resume reviews and mock interviews to help prepare members for their next move within Tesla.
- Gigafactory 1 LAT Leadership is working on a Learning Laboratory for all GF1 employees to better onboard colleagues into the manufacturing process.
- GF1 also led a successful Warmth for Puno Non-Profit Donation event, which collected coats, blankets, clothing, camping gear to donate to the Puno community.
Each quarter, we alternate primary focuses between community building, outreach and partnerships and career development (actually, career development is an evergreen initiative for us as we always want to help our members grow and flourish in their career track). This quarter, we'l primarily focuse on community building and partnerships, which also supplement our recruitment efforts (internal and external).
Myself and the LAT executive leadership team are also working on a few other initiatives that we'll be sharing with the LAT community (and everyone else) in the coming weeks and months, such as a new LAT brand. Stay tuned!