GeoLatinas: a new, inclusive, and innovative organization embracing, empowering, and inspiring Latin-women in Earth and Planetary Sciences
Abstract
Despite recent recruitment and inclusion initiatives for underrepresented minorities, Earth and Planetary Sciences have remained slow in reflecting demographic trends, remaining the least diverse STEM field in terms of racial and ethnic diversity. The lack of inclusivity is amplified for Latin-women, who historically and still at present experience a variety of issues such as discrimination or bias, harassment, salary gap, language barriers, and more. The GeoLatinas organization was created to help close this gap, and was founded with the mission of embracing, empowering, and inspiring Latinas to pursue and thrive in Earth and Planetary Science careers. In this session, we will introduce the GeoLatinas structure, describing our building blocks and engines.
GeoLatinas was designed as a circular organization, composed of six key groups, promoting inclusivity and stimulating teamwork and collaboration in academia and industry. These groups are: (i) The GeoLatinas Leadership Council (GLC) made of active members and volunteers; (ii) GeoLatinas Ambassadors (GAs) representing regions and leading local events and initiatives; (iii) GeoLatinas Local Teams (GLTs), allowing representation in universities and workplaces; (iv) Liaisons, acting as supporters and collaborators representing other societies from our geo-community; (v) Advisory Committee, experienced men and women of industry and academia; and (vi) Board of Directors, representing academia and industry. To support our mission and accomplish our objectives, we designed our organization to be collaborative and focus on 6 main initiatives (committees). These committees, specifically their leaders and volunteers, work together to promote the work of Latinas in Earth and Planetary Sciences; provide tools for development; reach the younger generations; inspire public interest; bridge the cultural and linguistic gap between Latin-Americans and worldwide opportunities, and to inform about job, research, and award opportunities for Latin-Women in our field. Our six key groups and committees help us support and live our mission. In living our GeoLatinas' mission, we also provide a platform for other minorities to feel validated and empowered, leading to action that benefits the greater geo-community, both in academia and industry.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMED33A..07C
- Keywords:
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- 0855 Diversity;
- EDUCATION;
- 1974 Social networks;
- INFORMATICS;
- 6630 Workforce;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6620 Science policy;
- PUBLIC ISSUES