Latinos at Amazon: building community, belonging, and career growth

Members of the Latinos at Amazon affinity group volunteered together during Amazon's Global Month of Volunteering in September 2023.

Carlos Carreras
AWS worldwide specialist organization storage sales leader & vice president of recruiting and development for Latinos at Amazon

How does the Latinos at Amazon affinity group measure its success and impact across Amazon & AWS?

We measure our success based upon the impact that we have across four main pillars: Recruit, Engage, Develop, and Advocate. On Recruitment, our goals are to increase the presence of Latino employees in Amazon’s workforce, reflect the demographic of our customers, and make our workplace more inclusive and creative.

Our Amazon workforce data shows progress, yet there is plenty of room to grow. Latinos at Amazon works closely with internal and external organizations—such as SHPE, ALPFA, and Latinas in Tech, among others—to develop meaningful long-term relationships that enable us to support and hire great talent. Engagement is all about expanding and strengthening the Amazon Latino community by creating a sense of belonging within Amazon, which provides members a feeling of inclusion, a voice, a choice, and empowerment. Membership in our Latinos at Amazon affinity group has more than doubled in the past three years, with hundreds of local chapters around the world across our lines of businesses.

Development centers on fostering mechanisms that help members to grow and have long-lasting careers at Amazon, turning our company into the best place to work for Latino talent at every level. We’ve created mentoring circles for our members, along with leadership development programs focused on career progression. Advocating represents our ability to influence Amazon efforts to effectively improve the lives of Latino customers, vendors, creators, and entrepreneurs, through our products and services. Examples include: 1/ The introduction of the Spanish language Amazon.com site and Cultúra Cultural Content Hub, 2/ An amazing lineup of Latino content produced by Amazon Studios, Amazon Video, and Amazon Music, and 3/ The AWS Impact Accelerator for Latino Founders, where we partner with entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses by leveraging our insight, experience, and technology.

How does Amazon/AWS support Latinos at Amazon and facilitate or amplify the work the group is leading?

We believe in delivering globally (pun intended!) and executing locally. Our affinity group spearheads global initiatives, most notably for Hispanic Heritage Month, in close partnership with our thousands of employees around the world. We find that by executing locally, we can maximize our impact and best engage in the communities that we serve. Our members collaborate with Amazon in the Community to amplify our efforts in areas including STEM education, help for hunger, and disaster relief. We are immensely proud of our volunteers and the impact that they make each and every day.

What exciting initiatives or projects does the group have planned for the future?

We love Hispanic Heritage Month because it gives us an opportunity to showcase all of the wonderful ways that Latinos make a difference. More importantly, it reminds us that we are all diverse, we are all unique, and we are all special. As an affinity group, we will continue close collaboration with organizations internally and externally. We’re extremely proud of projects such as the release of A Million Miles Away by Amazon Studios, which is a movie inspired by the real-life story of NASA flight engineer José Hernández. A Million Miles Away follows him on a decades-long journey, from a rural village in Michoacán, Mexico, to more than 200 miles above the Earth in the International Space Station. With the support of his family, José’s drive and determination culminates in the opportunity to achieve his seemingly impossible goal. There are many untold stories which we hope to continue to shine a light on as we support our Latino community.

What else would you like current or future employees to know about Latinos at Amazon and our work culture at AWS?

One of the things that I value most about working at Amazon is the opportunity to be my authentic self. We want you to be you, and tap in to all of the things that make you special. We value the individual and know that by being ourselves, we’re able to make each other better. In turn, that allows us to create, build, innovate, and deliver for and with our customers. Our culture of innovation is dependent on tapping into what makes us unique—it’s always Day 1 at Amazon!

Can you provide examples of specific success stories or instances where the group made a difference?

Creating a sense of community and shared experiences globally has really been one of the core tenets for the Latinos at Amazon affinity group. We support and encourage passionate members to take ownership of initiatives that are important to them. To date, we have successfully launched 345 chapters globally, with 53 launches since January 2023 alone. Each chapter launch is an opportunity to focus on educational and Latino perspective programing to advance cultural competency and awareness across Amazon.

A couple of recent noteworthy highlights include our support of AWS efforts to launch the Latino Founders cohort of the AWS Impact Accelerator. This was the third cohort to launch under AWS’s $30M commitment to support underrepresented founders, and the first to expand beyond North America to support startups with operations in Latin America. Those selected gained access to tailored programming, business and technical mentorship, curated startup resources, and $225,000 in cash and credits. At the close of eight-weeks, 93% of startups made tangible progress toward at least one of their technical goals such as cost optimization and AI/ML integration, and 90% of startups said they made tangible progress towards at least one of their business goals such as monetization and fundraising.

Latinos at Amazon is also supporting an internal program to identify and understand under-served customer groups at Amazon. This work aims to identify U.S. Hispanic consumers’ unmet needs, and opportunities for Amazon to improve the customer experience that will encourage preference and feelings of inclusion. While this initiative is not yet complete, the focus on delighting our customers highlights our focus on exercising true Customer Obsession.

What are some of the primary challenges facing the Latino community in the tech industry, and how does the affinity group work to solve for these challenges?

Representation, full stop. While I believe there have been advancements over the years in diversity in tech, Latinos/Latinas remain greatly underrepresented throughout the industry. Creating pathways for more diverse talent to get involved in tech is the first step. Most leaders I was exposed to growing up didn’t look like me, so it was a bit daunting to look ahead to finding a career path. Our affinity group partners with Amazon in the Community, and other community-focused organizations like Latinas in Tech and ALPFA to help drive initiatives that allow us to prepare early learners to launch their careers in tech, showing them that a path to tech is possible.

What else would you like current or future employees to know about Latinos at Amazon and our work culture at AWS?

At AWS, we recognize that the Hispanic/Latino/Latina culture is an evolving tapestry of identities and heritage. Representation is critical, and by acknowledging the intersections, supporting the diversity, and celebrating the voices that highlight the various cultures of a whole community; we are invested in finding new opportunities to attract, and retain Latino/a talent.

Adina Lozada
AWS principal technical program manager & and global vice president of development for Latinos at Amazon

Justin Gonzalez
AWS senior HR business partner & director of global chapters for Latinos at Amazon

How has the membership of the Latinos at Amazon group grown or evolved since its inception?

Established in 2012, the Latinos at Amazon affinity group spreads across many chapters all over the United States including Seattle, Arlington, Virginia, New York City, Austin, Texas, Arizona, Boston, and San Francisco, to name a few; Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), including Barcelona, Madrid, London, Luxembourg, Germany; and one in Asia (Tokyo). We are growing every day and it's amazing to see all of our chapters and how our members are so engaged. We are truly a world-wide group!

What are the most noteworthy events, activities, or initiatives the group leads to engage members?

Cafecito Break, which is an informal networking program, mentoring circles, fireside chats with influential Latino leaders, inclusion, diversity, and equity (ID&E) training events, Hispanic Heritage Month (HHM) programming, and Lideres, a development program for mid-career Latino/a/x Amazonians.

In what ways has the employee resource group positively impacted the experiences of Latino employees within the organization?

The Latinos at Amazon vision is for Amazon to be the best (and preferred) employer in the world for Latinos. Our affinity group makes progress in helping Amazon achieve this vision in three distinct ways. First, we build, grow, and enhance our community, empowering it to drive volunteer-led initiatives that can help make progress on our long-term objectives. Second, we advocate for new dedicated programs and focused goals that help us move faster in closing representation gaps.  

What else would you like current or future employees to know about Latinos at Amazon and our work culture at AWS?

We define Latino as anyone, from any race, who self-identifies as having Latin American or Hispanic origin because of heritage, nationality, lineage, or through self-identification. Latinos at Amazon welcomes everyone, including non-Latino allies, to be part of our group and participate in our efforts to help Latino employees, customers, and communities. We promote employee engagement and career development to better attract and retain Latino talent to Amazon. In turn, this enables us to deliver great products and services for our customers and communities. We seek to build equitable opportunities for Latinos to thrive at Amazon and we advocate not only for ourselves, but also for the customers that we represent.