That’s why over the past decade, she’s helped grow Latinas in Tech from a group of friends meeting for coffee to a full-fledged advocacy organization with 25 offices in seven countries.

Although the Bay Area’s technology companies have grown into some of the largest corporations in the world, Latino workers of all genders are largely left out. Latinas make up only about 2% of the tech workforce.

Now activists like van Nierop, CEO of Latinas in Tech, are facing a backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion programs at a time when mass layoffs are commonplace at tech companies.

A study by the Oakland-based Kapor Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for equity in the technology sector, reports that while about one in five U.S. workers is Latino, only one in 10 workers in the technology sector are Latino. In management, only 5% of executive positions and 3% of board seats at technology companies are Latino.

Like van Nierop, I was shocked to see that there were few Latin Americans succeeding in the Bay Area tech industry and in professional fields in general. Like van Nierop, I had the experience of working late into the night in San Francisco’s financial district. I was chatting in Spanish with Carmen, the woman who cleaned the office.

Employers often say their companies or industries lack diversity because they lack sufficient workers. Van Nierop agrees that we need more Latinos with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, but companies also need to expand their pool.

People are more likely to hire people they know, she added, because if a hiring manager doesn’t have Latinas in their network, they’re unlikely to hire them. But even when Latinas can gain a foothold in an industry, they often face barriers to advancement.

That’s why van Nierop, 44, is committed to helping Latinas become “Jefas” – female bosses.

“When you’re a Latina and you have hiring power, somehow more Latinos come in because people hire people they know in their networks,” she said. “Companies have to be mindful of hiring people with the same skill level but different backgrounds.”

Van Nierop was born in the United States and grew up in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where her parents are from. She

graduated in Marketing from Tecnológico de Monterrey, a prestigious private university in Mexico.

She worked for a few marketing firms in Mexico before moving to Boston to work for the Betclic Group, an online gambling and sports betting company. She ended up in the Bay Area when she took a job with presentation software company Prezi, heading up their marketing in Latin America.

Van Nierop, who is married with two children, left Prezi in 2019 to focus full-time on Latinas in Tech, an organization with about 33,000 members.

The organization’s membership has grown due to geographic expansion, but the percentage of Latinas working in the U.S. tech sector has remained stagnant for years. Additionally, many Latinas in the industry feel trapped in lower-level positions, according to Latinas in Tech’s annual survey. This year’s results showed that 64% of respondents did not hold leadership positions, even though most of them had enough experience to move up. Read my previous article on this here.

Van Nierop says tech executives have been saying for years that diversity is “the right thing to do,” and yet employees and executives remain predominantly male and white or Asian.

She saw progress over the past decade as many companies created the position of chief diversity officer in their executive suites. But now many companies are eliminating or limiting these positions after the Supreme Court ruled last year that colleges cannot consider race as an admissions criterion. The ruling does not apply to the private sector. Still, many executives have used it as an excuse not to make their workforce more diverse.