On August 15, Anna Dapelo-Garcia and Jenny Xochilt Salinas opened the doors of LinkedIn's Mountain View headquarters to the 2025 Lean In Latinas Take Charge Conference. Rafael Magaña, founder of Latina Professionals and its family of initiatives — Latinas in the Boardroom, Latina Equal Pay Day, Latina Mental Health Awareness Week, and Latina Influencers — attended as an ally, one guest among a room of Latina leaders who had come to spend a single day in each other's company.
The morning opened with Denise Soler Cox, a filmmaker and author, speaking on "The Inner Game of Belonging." She traced her own path through questions of cultural identity and the search for a place to stand, and left the room with a line that stayed: "When we share our stories, we create connections." Heads nodded around the room. People recognized their own histories inside hers.
Later, Dr. Melissa Abad and Michelle Rodriguez of LinkedIn sat down to discuss "Resilience and Agility in Times of Change." Their conversation made a quiet argument: that Latina professionals had been practicing resilience and agility long before either word became a line on a corporate slide. The skill came first. The vocabulary came later, borrowed from lives that had already been living it.
Angel Aviles, an author and coach, delivered the day's midday keynote, "Rooted & Rising: How Cultura, Courage, and Connection Keep Us Grounded While We Grow," and returned that afternoon for a panel called "Redefining Leadership." The same point ran through both appearances: leadership is not a title conferred by an organization chart. "Leadership is not just about titles; it's about how we uplift others," she said. The panelists who joined her built on that same ground — authenticity, inclusivity, courage — treating each as a daily practice rather than a value stated once and filed away.
The afternoon broke into smaller rooms. Lorena Fregoso led a session on storytelling, self-talk, and personal branding, framing personal history as the foundation of professional confidence rather than a detail to smooth over before a job interview. Lori Nishiura Mackenzie walked attendees through a leadership playbook built to amplify the people around a given leader, not only the leader herself. Hady Mendez ran pláticas on networking for jefas, and attendees left with new amigas and a few strategic connections they hadn't had that morning. Dr. Emma Pineda-Fortin closed her session, "Connecting with Tu Tierra Interna," by asking attendees to treat self-compassion as a working tool of leadership, not a luxury set aside for after the job is done.
Dra. CarolLaine García gave the closing keynote, asking the room to align their values, voice, and vision before they returned to their working lives.
What Magaña carried out of the building was not one idea so much as a day's accumulation of conversations — with women he already knew and women he had just met, adding up to something closer to familia than to networking. He credited Dapelo-Garcia and Salinas for building the room where that could happen, and said he was already planning to be back in 2026.
Event Host
The Lean In Latinas, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2013 by Anna Dapelo-Garcia and Jenny Xochilt Salinas to close the gender and racial pay gap for Latina professionals, presented this event. The 2025 Take Charge Conference, its seventh annual gathering, was held August 15, 2025, at LinkedIn's Mountain View, California headquarters.
Reported and written by Rafael Magaña, Founder & Publisher, for Latino Professionals Magazine. → Full archive
RECORD №00115 · MMXXVI · Latino Professionals Magazine
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