“You are not a human doing, you are a human being,” noted Jazmin García, who serves as Global Partnerships Lead for the Hispanics of LinkedIn Alliance, their Latinx ERG.

Through a presentation titled “Owning Our Intersectionality,” García, who especially notes that she is a first-generation queer Mexican-American, acknowledges firsthand the challenges that being openly gay and Hispanic brings to the workplace, but also invited attendees to discover incredible opportunities, especially to make connections at multiple intersections.

Defining intersectionality as the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender that apply to a given individual or group, García views differences not as an obstacle, but as a set of tools that provide strengths to new leaders in the workplace and push them to own themselves.

Mental Health

Among several of the moving stories that García shared, which invited us to bring everything we are with pride to the companies, highlighting the experiences lived as an asset for organizations, her experience in mental health management was really empowering.

García, who has eight years of experience in policy, programs and philanthropy, including developing more than 200 Latino leaders for a nationally recognized program, noted the importance of therapy, not just for her emotional health, but as a space that helped her boost her career, especially because it helped her value her roots and understand the fears that affected her, both personally and professionally.

Currently standing out thanks to her leadership roles as a Rock Your Profile Ambassador and LinkedIn Trainer, García, who since her childhood on the border, living between San Diego, CA, and Tijuana, Mexico, has always wanted to work in public service positions and social impact, underlines three aspects that each person must bring with them to companies:

1. Seek therapy and invest in yourself.
2. Do not separate the personal from the professional, it is not possible.
3. Prove that you belong.

Diverse Teams Succeed

Safely transmitting a message that invites us to promote our differences and raise our voices so that everyone knows who we are, García, who has a degree in Political Science from the University of San Diego and served as National Vice President of the Alumni Association of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and Co-President of Chicago Women in Philanthropy, where she transformed DIB programs during her tenure, highlights that it is precisely the differences that generate the most successful results in the different processes inside and outside companies.

Additionally, as an advocate committed to developing youth/emerging leaders and an avid volunteer with organizations such as ChicagoNext, Chicago Sister Cities International, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, University of San Diego Senior Legacy, Chicago Scholars, and Association of Latino/as Motivating Action (ALMA) Chicago, García seeks to empower diversity by establishing connections that, by promoting emotions, also strengthen business results.

“In 2015 I was sitting where you are today and I told myself that one day I would be in front of an audience talking about these issues. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but with resilience and being authentic I did it,” highlighted García.