Winner: Elena Chavez, Associate Director, Latino Audience Strategy at Consumer Reports
Elena Chavez demonstrates a commitment to honoring diversity and inclusion and embodies the meaning of a “diversity hero.” She’s an ambassador at Consumer Reports (CR), and is sought out as a leader, speaking on panels and events highlighting the great work being done at CR.
Chavez has 30 years of experience in program development, implementation, organizing and public interest advocacy. She leads CR’s strategic initiative to reach and engage Latinos. Prior to this, she focused her efforts on reaching the Spanish-speaking community, offering Spanish language content through distribution channels, including earned media, social media, a free Spanish-language website, an e-newsletter, content partnerships and community events.
Chavez, as the Chair of Latinovation, CR's Latino Employee Resource Group, led a cross-departmental strategy to develop a strategic initiative to build a business case for the organization to invest in reaching and engaging Latinos. The strategic initiative had 3 phases and took approximately 18 months to complete.
She has also been the Spanish language spokesperson for CR for seven years and has given over 900 interviews (television, radio and print media). Chavez has reached and engaged Latinos at conferences, including ConsuMiami's International Conference on World Consumer Rights Day and ADP's Latino ERG project for Hispanic Heritage Month.
Chavez has also presented at various Latism conferences in the past four years. During Latism ‘15, she shared CR’s efforts to utilize social media to effectively engage Latinos and shared CR's health content. She has also worked with Univision on several national consumer education campaigns related to education, health and money.