February 23, 2023 — Panel Discussion with Brittany Jones and Trisha Walsh

Empowering Tech Communities through ERGs

Employee resource groups (ERGs) are important grassroots initiatives that cultivate and support communities in the workplace. At Yelp, 17 different employee resource groups serve as a resource for employees with shared social identities, characteristics or life experiences as well as their allies. Come hear from two Yelp ERG leaders who will discuss their group's work, their journeys running engineering-specific groups in tech, and insights on navigating challenges and successes in this area.

Speaker — 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.

Speaker — Trisha Walsh

Trisha Walsh is currently VP, Engineering - IT managing Security Engineering and Technology; this organization includes teams for internal IT End User Support, Technology Sourcing, Procurement, People Technology and Security Engineering. Trisha has been at Yelp for five years. Additionally, she serves on the Board of Directors for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, CA. Trisha had previously been employed at Gap Inc., where she managed Global Services Strategy for IT Operations.

Moderator — Mariela Gonzalez

Mariela Gonzalez is a technical recruiting program manager on the Technical Talent team within the Product and Engineering Organization. She’s been working at Yelp for about five years and has held many different roles on the Technical Talent team before landing in her current position (recruiting coordinator, intern program coordinator, recruiter, and a short stint as a sourcer). Outside of her day-to-day work, Mariela also co-leads the employee resource group called SomosYelp, which is a space for our Latinx/Hispanic & allies to come together to share their lived experiences through various programming and events. She is passionate about creating safe spaces for folks to discuss topics such as colorism, intersectionality with multiple identities, codeswitching, and more.

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 Yelp employees from engineering and product share their stories about career development, technical skills and workplace challenges in a well-distributed environment.