August 3, 2021 by Joel Salas

Talk Summary: Stories help us understand each other, build community, and gain insight into the journeys people have embarked on. Yelping Forward — A Path Made Clear is an event that will feature Joel Salas’s story about his path to leadership. Through his challenges, successes, and professional highlights, we will hear about Joel's journey as a person of color in the tech industry.

Speaker: Joel Salas

Joel is an engineering manager and the head of Yelp’s Compute Platform group, which is responsible for enabling developers at Yelp to run their software products in Yelp’s infrastructure. He also co-leads ColorCoded, Yelp’s employee resource group for engineers of color and their allies. Before Yelp, Joel led the Platform team at NordstromRack.com in Los Angeles. Joel grew up in Chula Vista, CA and now lives in Oakland with his partner Esther and their Goldendoodle Zoey.

Moderator: Brittany Jones

As a technical recruiter at Yelp, Brittany supports the Engineering organization. With over five years of experience in full lifecycle recruiting, she is passionate about building strong relationships with hiring managers and candidates, creating ways to refine processes, and organizing events that help cultivate diversity and inclusion in the workplace. In both her role as a recruiter and as a member of the employee resource group ColorCoded, Brittany is committed to growing diversity within Yelp and providing a place for people to gather and learn about the stories of underrepresented communities.

Moderator: Tenzin Kunsal

As a part of the Engineering recruiting team at Yelp, Tenzin executes events and partnerships for the Engineering organization. Tenzin also co-leads the Yelp employee resource group ColorCoded. From serving in AmeriCorps to working in nonprofit organizations to board leadership, Tenzin has spent most of her career in the nonprofit sector and has worked with various community organizations in San Francisco and Minneapolis. Tenzin received her B.A. in Political Science from St.Olaf College. Having grown up in the Tibetan refugee community in exile, Tenzin has always been passionate about human rights and creating a just society for all.

About Yelping From Home:

Yelp’s mission is to connect people with great local businesses, and two of the teams working behind the scenes to make that happen are our five star engineering and product teams.

Playing an active role in our community is a value that we have strongly prioritized over the years. Typically we would invite you to come to Yelp’s HQ to network, grab a slice of ‘za, and learn about the technology and culture behind Yelp. With stay-at-home orders across the globe, Yelp (like many of you) has had no choice but to adapt to these changes. We understand that this is a strange and challenging time for many, so we’d like to invite you to join us as we navigate this new normal for the tech community together.

To stay connected, create space for folks to collaborate and share some of the things Yelp has been working on, we are launching our very own virtual tech talk series. This series of talks will feature Yelpers from engineering and product and will focus on themes such as career development, technical skills, workplace challenges and Yelp’s response to COVID-19.