I visited the University of California, Berkeley with my dad and younger brother when I was 11 years old, and afterward, I told my dad that I was going to go to school there.

I was accepted as a transfer student from Los Angeles City College, and put myself through undergraduate and graduate school at UC Berkeley.

I’m Latinx with light privilege and grew up in East Los Angeles. I have a trauma-informed and restorative justice background after losing my younger brother to neighborhood violence. It may sound strange, but the workplace is not without trauma, and these principles are fundamental tools that I bring to work every day.

I chose a career in technology because I have a vision to create transformational solutions that solve real problems. Public higher education appealed to me because of my passion to provide opportunity to underserved communities.

UC Berkeley announced its strategic initiative to become a Hispanic-serving institution by 2027, with a faculty and staff body that reflects the student population.

My career as a woman of color in technology has been both exhilarating and heartbreaking. I’ve witnessed talented folks leave quietly because they did not have a voice. I experienced the stigma of going public after enduring gender-based harassment. I witnessed the campuswide adoption of a cloud-based learning analytics platform that I managed from the ground up.

All of this is to say that a long career is going to be bittersweet.

How to Support Marginalized Communities Within IT Departments
To be successful in higher ed IT, it is critical to understand and acknowledge your organizational ethics and practices. The tension here is that if you have been successful within the predominant culture, you most likely do not want it to change.

I believe that true leadership includes embracing this uncomfortable change to raise the collective good. So what can university IT leaders do to support marginalized communities within their IT departments?

READ MORE: How universities can recruit and retain diversity in tech fields.

Create the necessary infrastructure for formal mentorship networks and tie performance criteria to this infrastructure to enable engagement. If we make mentorship a priority in our higher ed IT organizations, then it will be.

Build mentorship activities into job descriptions. Establish mentoring as a serious, funded program with structure, metrics and outcomes. Provide periodic benchmarking assessments to ascertain if the program is working.

Invest in Recruitment and Support for Underserved Groups
Recruiting is another important tool to support underserved groups and is the most important activity we undertake as leaders.

I have a personal philosophy when it comes to recruitment: If there are two strong finalists and I can hire only one, I commit to helping the second candidate find another position. That’s how seriously I take the candidates’ experience.

When conducting candidate interviews, share questions in advance. Interviews can be performative; remove that possibility by enabling your candidates to be thoughtful and prepared.

Employee resource groups are great ways for underrepresented staff to create community. Often, ERGs are touted as a “perk” for prospective candidates from underrepresented groups. Ideally, ERGs should be used to create strong professional networks and pave the way for discussions about workplace obstacles.

ERGs can be powerful change agents, but to be effective, leaders need to fund them, support them, listen to them and publicly acknowledge the work of their members.

Strong ERGs can provide best practices for recruitment, promote professional development among underrepresented staff and help create a more inclusive and aware organization.