Group builds next generation of Silicon Valley leaders
The ELLA program provides young Latinas with leadership skills
The Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley entered Tina Oliva’s life at just the right time.
A recent graduate of UC San Diego in 2019, Oliva learned about its Engaged Latina Leadership Activist, or ELLA, program and soon realized it gave her a sense of belonging that she had been missing since college.
“It was something I didn’t even know I was looking for,” said Oliva, 25. “The program provided a great community, a community that looked like me, other Latinas that were professional. I had never been part of something. I never had role models that were Latina.”
The Engaged Latina Leadership Activist program got its start in 2007 with Rachel Camacho, a higher education advocate who was then a board member of the Latina Coalition. She saw younger Latinas in the organization looking for opportunities to grow their leadership potential and helped build the program the following year, starting small but building up to a program that has served more than 170 Bay Area women from the ages of 19 to 29.
The Latina Coalition is seeking $25,000 from Wish Book readers to support scholarships for ELLA candidates. For each $1,000 raised, an ELLA candidate would be able to participate in the leadership program for free.
Gabriela Chavez-Lopez was part of that first ELLA cohort in 2008 and was hired earlier this year as the first executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, which has existed as a volunteer program since its start in 1999. Like Oliva’s experience, the ELLA program opened doors for her and put a Latina lens on many issues, which she realized was not the case during her time as a Santa Clara University student.
Perhaps more important, it made her part of a network that continues to support her even today. “I have mentors that to this day still call me and are fierce advocates for me,” she said. “These are relationships that I have developed over 15 years.”
A driving force behind the program since the start has been addressing the wage gap for Latinas, Chavez-Lopez said, noting that the ELLA program was created in part to get professional women involved in that conversation at the start of their careers.
In 2019, Latinas in California were paid on average 42 cents for every dollar earned by White men, and the gap is even more
pronounced in Silicon Valley, where the ratio is 33.5 cents to every dollar. The Latina Coalition’s ELLA program works to instill sisterhood, leadership and civic engagement, she said, while also giving them the tools to advocate for themselves in the workplace.
Those skills turned out to be very important for Oliva, who started the ELLA program in early 2020 and soon had her world rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Her cohort only met in person twice before the stayat-home orders forced the program to go virtual. She also was laid off from her job and lost her apartment.
The ELLA program “was the only piece of happiness I could check in with,” she said. “It was still a very inspiring time. There was so much hope.”
She worked on the campaign for Measure E, a property tax measure to support affordable housing, and volunteered with several nonprofits, creating connections that led to her being hired by the Mission Asset Fund, where she works in San Jose with undocumented and immigrant communities to provide financial assistance. And, she proudly points out, an ELLA workshop that she attended gave her the confidence to negotiate her compensation for more than she was initially offered.
“I was always just so grateful to have a job, I didn’t know you could negotiate your wage,” she said. “Now, I’m always pushing everyone to negotiate, especially my Latina family members.”
She’s also giving back to the Latina Coalition, joining the committee to help the 2021 cohort, which also met this year virtually. She said it feels great to mentor young women like herself and help them on their professional journeys.
For Chavez-Lopez, success stories like Tina Oliva’s aren’t just personal victories but show how the ELLA program can benefit the valley as a whole.
“I think we’re multipliers in terms of how we give back,” she said. “These are community-minded women who are coming here to learn how they can continue to help their community. And once they’re given the resources, they go out and do it. We pay it forward.”