To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re highlighting some of the most successful, respected executives in the tech industry who identify as being of Spanish, Mexican, Caribbean, Central American, and/or South American descent. Get to know (and follow!) these exceptional Operator LPs and portfolio founders and executives:
Aubrey Blanche @adblanche
Founder and CEO of The Mathpath; Sr Director of Equitable Design, Product, and People, Culture Amp.
Aubrey Blanche, Senior Director of Equitable Design, Product & People at Culture Amp, is also the CEO and Founder of The Mathpath as well a startup investor and advisor, and non-profit board member. Through all her work, she seeks to question, reimagine, and redesign the systems and practices that surround us to ensure that all people can access equitable opportunities and build a better world. She is the inventor of the balanced teams approach to building proportional representation and a culture of belonging in the workplace.
Elena Gomez @gomez3_elena
Chief Financial Officer, Toast. Board Member of PagerDuty, SmartSheet, the Haas School of Business and OpCo Advisory Board
While most people go to restaurants to simply eat the food, Elena Gomez spends just as much time observing the operational flow from order to execution, giving her a leading advantage in her latest role of Chief Financial Officer of Toast, Inc., a cloud-based, end-to-end technology platform purpose-built for the entire restaurant industry. Elena is responsible for Toast’s finance organization and leads the company’s accounting, treasury, financial and strategy, and business operations. With over 30 years of experience ranging from scaling SaaS businesses into multi-billion organizations, building and leading large-scale operational teams, and achieving executive alignment on strategy and financial goals across multiple stakeholders, Elena has no shortage of proven outcomes. Most recently she helped scale Zendesk to over $1B in annual revenue while serving as CFO. While her accomplishments seem like they couldn’t get any bigger, she recently added one more title to her CV: 5th grade basketball coach to her daughter’s team. Elena currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors at Smartsheet and PagerDuty. She also serves on the board of the Haas School of Business and The Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco. She holds a B.S. in Accounting from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley.
Maia Josebachvili @MaiaJo_
Head of Strategic Operations, Financial Services, Stripe. Board Member of Brightwheel.
Maia Josebachvili is currently a member of the Leadership Team at Stripe, transitioning from Head of Strategic Operations, Head of Corporate Development, and Head of People at the company. Prior to her current run at Stripe, she served as Vice President of Strategy, Marketing, and People at Greenhouse, a recruiting and automation platform. While Maia’s talents seem endless, she’s also had stints as a Founder & CEO (sold the company), a derivatives trader on Wall Street, an engineer, and a pro-skydiver logging over 750 skydives. Throughout these experiences, she’s been a part of the growth journey of scaling several companies from 1 to 8000+ employees. Maia is on the board of Brightwheel and the Dartmouth Magnuson Center, and is a board observer at Forma and TrueLayer. Outside of work, you can find her trail running, camping with her husband and two sons ages 4 and 5, living the part-time van-life, and working towards a life of full-time adventure.
Manny Medina @medinism
CEO, Outreach
Manny Medina is the CEO of Outreach, a sales platform he co-founded in 2014. Prior to Outreach, Manny was employee number three on Amazon’s AWS team where he engineered Amazon’s compensation system for Amazon Associates, and led the Microsoft mobile division from launch to $50M in annual revenue. He holds an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Known for his vulnerable and transparent leadership, Manny sends heartfelt weekly emails to his employees, hosts Friday get-togethers, and encourages everyone to recognize the highs and lows of their job and workplace. Manny grew up in Ecuador and now lives with his wife and three children in Seattle.
Cindy Guerra Robbins @CindygRobbins
Former President & Chief People Officer, Salesforce. Board Member of YearUp, ActiveCampaign, Appfire, Path Forward.ORG.
Cindy Robbins, formerly the President and Chief People Officer of Salesforce, is an independent board director, corporate advisor, and senior executive with 20+ years of experience counseling CEOs and other senior executives. During her 13 years at Salesforce, she was instrumental in making Salesforce an equal-pay pioneer, one of the world’s most admired companies, and one of the best places to work. Today, Cindy serves on the boards of ActiveCampaign, a SaaS-based marketing automation platform, and Year Up, a non-profit organization that trains diverse young people and pairs them with major companies for internships and jobs. Cindy is an expert on recruiting and retaining talent, optimizing productivity and employee satisfaction, and building healthy and diverse cultures that facilitate growth.
Christina Calvaneso Ross @cfochristina
Co-Founder and CEO, Cube
Christina Ross is the Founder and CEO of Cube, a real-time FP&A platform for modern finance teams. With prior roles at Rent the Runway, Criteo, Eyeview, and GE, Christina has over two decades of finance experience that she’s now leveraging for her latest startup. As a venture-backed CFO and in roles prior, Christina is committed to ensuring company diversity exists at the start, enabling the greatest possible experiences and outcomes for employees and users alike.
