Lean In Latinas: Celebrating Strength In Diversity With Anna Dapelo-Garcia

 

Lean In Latinas is more than just a community. It’s a movement paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable future. Join host Elizabeth Bachman and Anna Dapelo-Garcia, founder of Lean In Latinas, as they delve into the challenges faced by Latinas in the workplace. Anna reflects on her journey, emphasizing the importance of community in fostering resilience and empowerment. The conversation delves into Anna’s relentless pursuit of justice, the importance of representation in leadership, and how personal experiences shaped her advocacy. You won’t want to miss this inspiring conversation about breaking barriers and achieving success!

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Lean In Latinas: Celebrating Strength In Diversity With Anna Dapelo-Garcia

Introduction

We are recording for Hispanic Heritage Month or Latinx Heritage Month, featuring a wonderful guest, Anna Dapelo-Garcia. She is the Founder of Lean in Latinas, which is the Latino version of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In Circles. She was born and raised in San Francisco. She got a Master’s of Public Administration from the University of San Francisco and was named the Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence, also from the Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, which spells HOPE, the Leadership Institute. She’s had so many awards, being named Woman of the Year by Women Healthcare Executives. 

She’s been a state commissioner with the state of California and board member for the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, and currently vice chair and board member for the University of San Francisco, her alma mater. Since 2015, she’s been the Regional Program Leader for LeanIn.org, and where she was featured in the New York Times. She’s also been heard on multiple radio stations and is really quite an important person and much-awarded person. She’s a very interesting conversationalist as well. Let’s go on to the interview with Anna Dapelo-Garcia.

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Anna Dapelo-Garcia, welcome to the show.

Thank you, I’m happy to be here. 

Dream Interview

I’m very happy to have you and excited to have you as part of our Hispanic Heritage Month, Latinx Heritage Month, whatever, and all the many things involved. Before we get to talking about your very interesting project, tell me who would be your dream interview. If you could speak with someone who is no longer with us, who would it be? What would you ask them and who should be listening? 

It was hard to pin one particular person. I thought about the pivot I’ve made in my life and really being a fierce advocate for equality and equity and on issues that impact women, particularly women of color. The resilience that I’ve had to have. The tenacity that I’ve had to have just relentless. That’s a word that one of my colleagues has used for me, just somebody who’s just relentless and just willing to get up every day no matter how hard the good fight is. 

There were a number of people that came to mind. For me and for many people, somebody who embodies these characteristics of what it takes to just be relentless in your messaging and your advocacy would probably be somebody like Martin Luther King. He’s just somebody that I see as someone who pursues his dream of fighting for people within his community, no matter the support or the criticisms. I feel the same way in just my tenacity and unwillingness to give up on what I think is right. 

What would you ask him? I would be there, you bet.

I’d ask him for advice because it certainly impacts my ability to keep up with other things that are just as important, whether that’s my family or my personal relationships with my husband, my daughter, and my grandchildren. There are concessions that you do make along the way. How do you deal with those decisions that you make that sometimes make you feel like I could be at home spending time with my family? Why am I here at the Women’s March advocating for what I think? 

It’s really hard to equally parse out all of your priorities in your life and just the resilience that you have to have and feel like you’re not really moving the needle, but knowing that the next day is just another day and another opportunity to try to move that needle. Recognizing that you cannot do it alone. You need to do it with your community. You need to do it with people who might be allies. Also, recognizing that it’s not just the generation that you’re in that you have to advocate for. You have to recognize that it will take many generations to help close these gaps. I would probably ask him what helped you persevere through a lot of those challenges. 

It’s not just the generation you’re in that you have to advocate for. It will take many generations to help close these gaps. Share on X

Lean In Latinas

I would love to be part of that. I’d love to hear that interview. Anna, you started a group called Lean In Latinas and for anyone in our audience who doesn’t know what Lean In is, can you explain first about the Lean In phenomenon and who the author was and all of that? 

The phenomenon, it was Sheryl Sandberg. Sheryl Sandberg, who was the prior Chief Operating Officer for Facebook, now known as Meta. sShe penned the book Lean In and it went viral not only in the street but around the world. As a result of that book, she partnered with the cofounder of Lean In, Rachel Thomas, and they came up with this concept of what’s called circles, which is typically a smaller group of primarily women that come together and talk about how they can lean in, around issues that women face in the workplace, whether it’s under-representation, lack of equality and pay, microaggressions, unconscious bias. 

Years ago, I picked up the book Lean In, but I was always picking up books where I could maybe find a couple of pearls of wisdom and what I could do differently in the workplace. I read the book and I was inspired by it. I found out about Lean In Circles and I went to their website. There were many here in the Bay Area where I live. For whatever reason, Elizabeth, I never joined one of those circles and I really didn’t know why. One Sunday morning, I was drawn right back to that website, still interested in how I could get involved, and I saw a button that said, “Create your own circle.”

That inspired me and I pressed on the button, not really knowing exactly what was going to happen and I did get a screen that said, “What would you like to name your circle with submission and vision of your circle?” Within 10 minutes or less, somehow, I came up with Lean in Latinas. When I did that, I realized that the reason I didn’t join any of the other circles was that none of them spoke to me in the way I identify. That’s when that light bulb went off and because many of these circles are geographically identified, Lean In Palo Alto, Lean In San Francisco. 

I put in Lean In Latinas and I put in a mission and vision and hit enter and not knowing exactly what was going to happen. Within about a couple of days, the first person who wanted to join my circle said, “I’m a first-generation college graduate Latina and I want to be around other like-minded Latinas.” Another person wrote in, “I’m a Latina engineer in a primarily white male-dominated environment and I’d like to learn how to navigate in this environment.” 

The first meeting was myself and three people who didn’t know me and I was completely fascinated by this because it was a Saturday morning. I could be a terrible person, but they’re showing up at my doorstep. I really knew that I had to do a lot of intentional listening. I wanted to really understand what would compel these people on a day off to show up at a stranger’s house. Seeking a community to have a conversation. Within six months, it was about a hundred people. 

Can you explain what’s the basic concept of Lean In? Leaning in as a leaning in towards the table. Where does the name come from?

I won’t try to pretend to be inside Sheryl Sandberg’s mind, but my interpretation of it is that we can lean in as females to help. Like for example, I will discuss around representation. Lean In released the 2024 State of Latinas and Corporate America report. I was very honored to be one of the contributors and part of their brain trust in this report. Latinas represent 1% of executive-level roles across corporate America, which is a very hard number for me to get situated in my head because I’ve been in the workforce for many decades. 

When I first started my career, I didn’t see women that looked like me in roles that I aspire to be in. Here we are 35, 40 years later, and it’s 1%. It’s really, what can we do to lean in to change some of these unfortunate statistics? It could be simple strategies around where do you sit at the table. Are you at the table? Are you not at the table where decisions are being made? Are you negotiating for pay? 

Are you becoming familiar with unconscious bias? What are microaggressions? How do you deal through microaggressions? How what can you do? Again, one thing I would say is that although there are actions we can take but to also recognize that solving these issues does not rest on the shoulders, solely on the shoulders of women. Companies need to lean in as well. What are they doing to be more inclusive? What are they doing to look at their pipeline? I think the words lean in can be used in a number of ways.

I think of it also for women, often, we tend to lean back, lean out, and observe because that’s safe. As I remember, and I read the book when it first came out, I don’t remember the details as well as you must, but it would be lean in and take part in the conversation. Lean in and say, “Yes, I want to be heard. Yes, this is important. My voice is important.” I’m all about helping women be heard. Leaning in to be part of the circle instead of leaning out and observing from the outside, from the sidelines. Would that be fair? 

100% on point. What I was thinking about and listening to you was my experience when I first entered the workforce in probably the most prominent way. I work for a very large academic medical center. When I got a job, my parents said to me, “Ana, whatever you do, keep your head down. Don’t cause any trouble. You’re lucky to have that job.” My father came from that perspective because of the experiences he had as a Latino, particularly in the army, where he dealt with a lot of racism and discrimination. In his way, he was trying to protect me. 

The unfortunate thing that happened, though, was that it immediately silenced my voice. It immediately made me feel inferior and that I needed to be leaning out, being invisible, and not speaking up. What Lean In has done for me is the opposite. It’s given me more confidence. It allowed me to lean in when I was afraid, and I stayed leaning out. You’re 100% right. It’s made me more brave. It’s made me feel more confident and connected me to a very large community, a global community of women who are leaning in, not just in this country but across many countries. You’re spot on. 

Importance Of Community Support

One of the things that I have noticed in my work with women and men is how important it is for women to have the support of a community, of a group, or a cohort. Over and over, I’ve seen that where women won’t raise their hand to speak. I’ve been a presentation skills trainer for almost 15 years now, and I talk to event organizers around the world. I say, “Why is it 95% men at your conference?” 

Most of them will say, “We’d love to have women, but if we ask a woman, she’ll say, I’m not really ready yet and ask me again next year,” which, of course, they never do. They’ll never ask you next year if you turn down this year, but having a group with you to say, “You could do this, go for it, or even don’t chicken out, make sure that you do it.” That has made such a difference. Where do you think that comes from?

What I hear when I’m listening is those moments of a crisis of confidence. I think also that this would apply to many of the other many circles that are a part of the Lean In organization. There is power in community. We have a mantra within Lean In Latinas called Learn, Share, and Grow. Learn is each member wants to learn something, whether that is to have more confidence, that you do say yes to a presentation. You don’t lean out. They want to share with each other. 

 

We actually have a career coaches circle to partner with people like you who exude confidence, who would not say no, and who would but they want to share with each other. They want to uplift each other. Finally, they want to grow in some capacity. It’s interesting. Our circle leader for our career coaches group initially put the circle together thinking it would be people like you coming to the table as professional career coaches. What she ended up realizing was that most of the members were the ones who might say no to that presentation. 

Most of the members of that group are looking for that support and now have a community, a circle of women who are professional coaches, but also women who want to be that professional coach, who want to have that confidence. There’s definitely a power in that. I had, myself personally, I had to work on my own confidence. The State of Latinas and Corporate America report also talks about cultural norms. Culturally, it’s not comfortable to see bragging about our accomplishments but getting comfortable with that. 

One of the recommendations that the report has is for people managers to be cognizant of the differences in culture. In some cultures, I wasn’t brought up to have my voice at the table. My upbringing was that you’re a child, and this is adult talk. This is so I wasn’t brought up in an environment where I felt comfortable presenting either my opinion or my recommendations. I think there are a number of factors with that. Women, in general, have an opportunity to become more confident, particularly in environments where we might be onlies, where we might be minorities.

Women in general have an opportunity to become more confident, especially in environments where they may be the onlies. Share on X

My only do you mean the only woman in the room or certainly the minority, the only woman of color in the room?

I was the first Latina executive director at my place of employment. While I’m really proud of that, being an only is can be very challenging. In the report, there is a section around being an only. Not only did I feel that I had to work harder to demonstrate my competence as being the only female Latina as an executive director. I also felt the weight of trying to represent my community, not just my own competence, but what can I do to help further open the door for other people who look like me to be at this table? 

I’ve heard that from so many people who say, “I have to be perfect because if I do something wrong, it counts against every woman. Even more so if you’re a woman of color.”

You feel like you have a higher bar that you have to get over, so yes, the presentation sounds great, but I have to work extra hard.

Facing Diversity

Although I must say that the recordings I’ve seen of you presenting, you’ve been awesome. It has really helped. It’s really made a difference. We’re recording this in 2024. In the last couple of years, there has been a big pushback in America, at least against diversity measures. What are you hoping for when as an advocate for equality and representation for Latina women? Actually, sometimes it seems like the only diversity we notice is between black and white. 

That’s a great question. I can understand that. I appreciate why that happens, but there are many dimensions of diversity, and they are not exclusive to gender, race, or ethnicity. It’s also around disability. It’s also around LGBTQ. It’s also around veterans and age. There are many dimensions of diversity, but my hope is that we stay committed as a country. That’s really hard to say, given what is happening in the political arena. When I first started in this department in DEI, it was a little quiet. People knew that it was important to start the department, but when the George Floyd murder occurred, it was a tsunami of requests that were coming into the department.

That would be the summer of 2020.

Yes, it was. We went from the phone ringing every couple of hours to every couple of minutes. That was great because we needed to have hard conversations and do the hard work. It’s easy to say it’s been disappointing to see that companies are now retracting from their commitments or eliminating these types of departments. I’m really proud of the organization. I’m part of that is still committed. 

I’m proud that that the Lean In organization is continuing to grow and they have not taken their foot off the pedal. We are a very diverse country, and I don’t think we have an option to ignore the diversity of our teams and how diversity and inclusion matter. I get up every morning and I’m still going to pursue what I pursued 4 or 5 years ago because it’s absolutely necessary for this generation and the next generation. 

I think we become better as a society to recognize and celebrate our differences. Ten years ago, in the workplace, we didn’t talk about Hispanic Heritage Month at the level that we do now, Black History Month, or Pride Month. We did not take the time to immerse ourselves in the culture of other people. I really hope that we don’t stop doing that, that we do it more, and that we celebrate each other more. I think we become stronger when we recognize our differences and appreciate them and leverage them. 

We become stronger when we recognize our differences, appreciate them, and leverage them. Share on X

Yes, and just this whole feeling of community that can be inclusive as well as exclusive. Anna, let me ask you. If we’ve got a listener here who is part of the white majority, male or female, and they want to know what it feels like to be a Latina or Latino, what it feels like, without being insulting, but reach out to truly understand and widen your horizons?

Just being authentic and honest and respectfully curious. That’s really one of the characteristics of an inclusive leader. We were able to leverage Deloitte’s six signature traits of inclusive leadership when we built a workshop around that. After George Floyd, there were many white employees who said, “I don’t know how to ask the questions. I want to be respectful. I want to learn more.” As a person of color, there’s a feeling you get from somebody who will ask that question. When it’s done authentically and respectfully, you can feel that and you know that.

There are ways to immerse yourself there. What more can somebody learn? It’s Hispanic Heritage Month. There are many articles out there. Have you read them? Are you interested in what is it and why is it celebrated? We have a number in the workplace, and at least many companies have employer resource groups and affinity groups.

We’re very intentional. In the naming conventions of these groups, we always have the word allies attached to these groups because you cannot say you want to be inclusive and then have exclusive practices. It doesn’t work that way. I encourage people to join all of these groups to learn. I’m still learning. If I go to a meeting with the Pride employee resource group, I’ll learn more about pronouns. Why are pronouns important? What does that mean when somebody is transitioning? 

Just to explain that to those who don’t live in this universe of Pride and transitions, the pride groups would be the lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, etc. groups. There are many people now who consider that they’re not either he or she. They will use the pronouns they and theirs to be non-binary. The whole spectrum of who you love and what your gender is has broadened immensely since I was a kid.

Part of this journey for all of us is to immerse ourselves in understanding different groups and people’s viewpoints. That’s part of the process. I want to learn more, whether it’s among the black community or the Asian Pacific Islander community. Other types of communities. Being curious and wanting to learn more is the first good step to that.

 

Ask yourself questions around, “Do I need to diversify the people I make friends with, the places I go to, or the groups I immerse myself in? Do I need to have diversity in that?” There are many books out there. There are a number of resources that all really come down to you. Is this a priority in your life? Is to really look at how you can see the world outside of the community that you’re in.

Being able to see the world and put yourself in the shoes of others is one of the great joys of life, and it helps us appreciate what other people are going through. How could somebody start then with somebody who’s curious about LinkedIn or LinkedIn Latinas? How can we find you, start something, and tell us more? 

We don’t make it hard. I see the power in allies. We cannot do this work alone. We’re not going to move the needle alone. Probably the first thing is LeanInLatinas.org. That’s the easiest way to find us. We have a really wonderful and diverse membership. There are no membership fees. People can join either as a member of an existing circle. They can start their own circle. We were very open to how people would like to contribute. We have circles that are geographically identified, whether it’s Lean In Latinas, Houston, or in Canada.

Then we have some that are around certain industries like lean in Latinas and healthcare, but we’re very inclusive and the prior mayor of San Jose, California, had reached out when I first started the group and he sent an email and he said, “Anna, can a Latino,” which is a male, somebody who’s Latin, “Latino join?” I had to give that a few minutes of thinking. I said, “Absolutely.” We have people who identify in a number of ways. 

We just had our annual conference and there definitely was diversity in the audience. I think that that’s a benefit. I don’t want us to look at the world in a vacuum. LeanInLatinas.org is a good place to start. People follow us on LinkedIn. They follow us on Instagram and Facebook. We don’t put any pressure on how people would like to participate. They can observe what we’re doing. I also have a Lean in Latinas live podcast that I do on LinkedIn. That’s easy to access and people who are curious listen in. There’s a variety of ways that people can participate with us. 

Anna Dapelo-Gracia, this has been such an interesting conversation and really very illuminating. Lean In is a wonderful resource. It’s a really great resource and I highly recommend anyone who’s curious to check it out. Thank you so much for having been part of the show. 

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This has been Speakers Who Get Results. I’m Elizabeth Bachman, your host. If this was interesting, please tell your friends to subscribe to us on YouTube or  Apple Podcasts. Leave us a good review on Apple Podcasts. That’s the one that people track. That’s the one that enables us to get even better, more exciting guests. In the meantime, I’ll see you on the next one.

 

Important Links

• Anna Dapelo-Garcia
• Lean in Latinas
• Lean In
• LinkedIn – Lean In Latinas
• Instagram – Lean In Latinas
• Facebook – Lean In Latinas
• YouTube – Speakers Who Get Results
• Apple Podcasts – Speakers Who Get Results

 

About Anna Dapelo-Garcia

Anna Dapelo-Garcia is passionate about making a difference for the current and future generation of Latinas. She is a fierce advocate for Equal Pay and preparing Latinas for success in the workplace. Anna has received numerous recognitions for her work. In 2013, she received a Silicon Valley Business Journal Woman of Influence award, in 2017 she was named Woman of the Year by the Women Health Care Executives, in 2018 she was recognized by the National Diversity Council as a Top Latino Leader and in 2019 she received a Latino Business Leadership award by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. She has been featured in Forbes, on National Public Radio (NPR), and in the New York Times for her work as Founder of Lean In Latinas.