Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the United States since 1987. As part of this year’s theme: Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories, we will highlight women from our Crew Resource Groups (CRGs) who will share their unique stories and perspectives.

In the second installment of this series, we feature Alejandra R. as she shares her experience in our Hispanic/Latinx Organization for Leadership and Advancement (HOLA) CRG.

When I started at Vanguard Australia four years ago, we had a range of Crew Resource Groups (CRGs) but there wasn’t a Hispanic/Latin American CRG. However, after investigating I soon discovered that there was one operating in the US. I have always been passionate about diversity and inclusion, and thought it would be a great idea to create the CRG here in Australia, given that the Latin/Hispanic community is growing in the country.

After a lot of hard work, we launched the Hispanic/Latinx Organization for Leadership and Advancement (HOLA) in February 2021. The warmness with which crew engaged with HOLA has been fantastic and has really made me feel welcomed and accepted. We have run events on different cultural celebrations such as Brazil’s Carnival and Cinco de Mayo where we had more than 200 crew join us.

The opportunity of launching and co-leading HOLA has not only helped me grow personally, it has also enabled me to build my professional skills. Despite being in a relative junior role when I started looking into the idea, I was supported and encouraged to work on and launch the CRG. HOLA has given me a platform to build my confidence and explore areas I hadn’t been exposed to before, such as leadership and public speaking, whilst extensively growing my network within the company, locally and globally.

I am proud to say I work for a company that really cares about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and where crew are truly inclusive, as well as being in a nurturing environment where there are such great opportunities for growth.

– Alejandra R.

From left to right: Curt Jacques (HOLA Australia Sponsor), Alejandra Romero (HOLA Australia Co-lead), Tim Buckley (Vanguard CEO), Luis Ramirez (HOLA Australia Co-Lead)