Pride Month, celebrated in June in the USA, is upon us. For so many in the LGBTQIA+ community, Pride is a time to celebrate their identities, and also to reflect and contemplate the struggles of the past. Convoy’s LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group (ERG), Pride@Convoy is celebrating this month with exciting events for the entire company, while continuing to grow and foster a community within Convoy for LGBTQIA+ employees to shine.

While Slack is the Pride@Convoy ERG’s main hub for members to communicate with one another – sharing stories, advice, pet photos, etc. – the ERG also regularly hosts community events for its members, allies of the LGBTQIA+ community, and Convoy as a whole. These events create spaces for members to discuss the complexities of life as an LGBTQIA+ person and empower the LGBTQIA+ community’s voice in and out of the workplace. Through the ERG’s Slack channel, Pride@Convoy hosts weekly trivia to engage the community, and Music Mondays where ERG members share their favorite tunes.  Having regular events like this helps keep casual dialogue going in our current virtual work environment, which helps foster the ERG’s sense of community. Pride@Convoy has over 80 members scattered between Seattle and Atlanta, including remote employees across the rest of the country as well. Pride@Convoy is continually growing and evolving as new colleagues join and contribute their own unique perspectives and stories.

To celebrate Pride Month, the Pride@Convoy ERG is hosting several events for both LGBTQIA+ employees and allies to join in on the fun. On June 2nd, Pride@Convoy hosted a “speed friending” event where employees spent a few minutes over Zoom in a 1:1 conversation with a randomly assigned colleague. They were provided a list of questions to kick off the conversation, ranging from silly to intriguing in order to better get to know each other and foster a sense of community. The event served as a place for many new-to-Convoy ERG members to meet each other face to face despite still working remotely.

Jonathan, a Convoy employee who attended the Speed Friending event, said, “My experience with the speed friending event was AMAZING! I really enjoyed the event because I felt that I was in a safe place and I felt that I was respected as a person. It was a great break from work to just be around individuals who wanted to have a good time and wanted to get to know one another on a more personal level.”

Later in the month, on June 23rd,  Pride@Convoy will be hosting a short film watch party with a focus on educational content around issues facing the LGBTQIA+ community and its history. This event is open to everyone and last year’s event drew a crowd.  Additionally, The Pride@Convoy ERG council is sending flower growing pride kits out to members who want to participate in a virtual flower planting party toward the end of the month.

To round out the month, on June 30th, the Pride@Convoy council is hosting an LGBTQIA+ improv comedy event, inviting all employees for an evening of laughs, and to continue the celebration of pride month as a team.

For companies looking to start an LGBTQIA+ ERG or any ERG to support your employees, it’s important to have leadership’s buy-in on listening to feedback and vulnerability to hear where improvements need to be made.  Pride@Convoy  amplifies the LGBTQIA+ community’s voice within Convoy. They do this by having ERG leadership meet bi-weekly to collate feedback to send to Convoy’s People Team about the experiences of LGBTQIA+ employees. The People Team then works directly with ERG leadership when making decisions to ensure the community’s needs are being addressed. For example, the Pride@Convoy leadership council was consulted when Convoy was choosing a healthcare insurance provider to help ensure that LGBTQIA+ employees have access to inclusive healthcare. 

It can be challenging at many companies for LGBTQIA+ employees to self-advocate or have a voice as a community. The goal of Pride@Convoy  is to foster a mindset of inclusivity in every aspect of the company, as well as help LGBTQIA+ employees communicate their needs in an open environment. People are most creative and productive when they feel included and respected in the workplace – this is the environment the Pride@Convoy ERG strives to create and constantly improve upon. More events and more importantly, more impact, will come from Pride@Convoy throughout 2021 and well beyond.

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This month is Asian Pacific Islander (API) Heritage Month. API Heritage month originated in Congress in 1977 as a week-long event and expanded to the full month of May in 1990 to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843. May also marks the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, where the majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants. API Heritage Month is a celebration of the history and culture of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. At Convoy, TransportASIAN, our API Employee Resource Group (ERG) is taking the lead on activities, celebrations, and educational sessions to build community among Convoy employees, while celebrating the six-month anniversary of our launch as an official ERG.

TransportASIAN formed in October 2020 out of Convoy’s third annual Moonshot Week, a hackathon-style event where employees pursue ideas or projects that have the potential to impact our company, internally or externally. During this week-long event, a small group of us turned the idea to create an employee resource group for the API community (& friends) at Convoy into reality. TransportASIAN’s mission is to create an inclusive environment by promoting Asian diversity within Convoy and celebrating Asian cultures. In the weeks that followed, TransportASIAN held its official launch event with over 40 employees and we’ve been working hard to grow and engage our community and allies ever since. 

We’re proud of everything TransportASIAN has accomplished in our first six months as an ERG, especially since we have only ever met virtually, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve run several engaging and educational virtual events – our biggest so far was the Lunar New Year Dumplings & Desserts event in February. During this event, 65 attendees joined a virtual dumpling making class (or ordered takeout dumplings) where community members and friends participated in making and eating dumplings and rice cakes, as well as learning about the cultural significance of dumplings in various Lunar New Year traditions across Asia. 

In addition, we have been engaging Convoy’s API community and consulting with company leadership in response to the recent surge in API hate across the country. We have taken advantage of Lyra, Convoy’s virtual mental health provider to enable dedicated API listening sessions and made public Convoy’s statement against AAPI hate. Additionally, TransportASIAN led a company all-hands meeting on March 31st where we discussed the issues facing the AAPI community and Dr. Tiffany Green, Convoy’s DE&I advisor shared resources for how to engage and support as allies. A powerful employee panel of ERG members also shared their experiences and told their stories.

For API Heritage Month, TransportASIAN is taking its involvement in the Convoy community to the next gear. Throughout May, there will be weekly events highlighting API heritage, such as trivia and other employee engagement events conducted virtually through Slack and Zoom, spotlights on API history, and tips on how best to support local API businesses. There will also be bigger social events including a virtual Fireside Chat with Marc dela Cruz – the first API to play Hamilton on Broadway, a virtual Bollywood dance class with award winning choreographer Rohit Gijare, and a virtual museum tour of the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle.

TransportASIAN is excited to celebrate and honor our heritage with the Convoy community this month. We hope that through our events, we can encourage all to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of Asian cultures and histories. 

To our community: being cognizant of the recent disheartening climate, we strive to be sensitive as we recognize our community continues to be in a time of healing, and hope you join in our excitement as we move into a month of celebration that highlights our diverse identities.

To our friends: being an ally is not about who you are, but what you do. We encourage you to check in with your API friends, families, and neighbors, and to share our passion in learning the stories of those around us.

Convoy celebrates diversity in its carrier network.  If you’re a carrier and want to  learn about new opportunities, reach out to us at supplierdiversity@convoy.com or visit our supplier diversity page for more information.

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When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020, Convoy shifted its business operations to an entirely work-from-home format to ensure the health and safety of employees. While this change has affected all Convoyagers differently, one group that has been affected the most is working parents. Before COVID-19, working from home and being able to spend the day with the kids could be an enjoyable way to spend more time with family. Now, it has become a delicate balance of setting and achieving work expectations while parenting full-time. While this balance has been challenging, working parents at Convoy have learned to lean on each other and take advantage of the resources available to them in order to succeed in this new environment. 

Things have changed quite a bit from throwing Convoy’s first official “Take Your Kids to Work Day” event at the Seattle office in 2019, a memory many took home and put on the metaphoric trophy shelf. As the pandemic has continued to affect the way we work, go to school, and live our lives, working parents, including myself, have had to adapt to our “new normal” in challenging, surprising, and sometimes uplifting ways. Now, the once-in-a-while  privilege of children joining their parents on a Zoom meeting has become a necessity for working parents with kids in school. One challenge working parents have faced over the past year has been asking for help in both our professional and family lives. For Nikki Brown, a Senior Account Manager and founder of the Parents @ Convoy Employee Resource Group (ERG), that looked like “asking my dad to watch my kids sometimes or taking my sister up on an offer to help meal plan on the weekend. I learned where to lean on others for help in my org [rather] than try and recreate the wheel.”

Convoy’s Parents Slack channel has been a great place for parents to laugh, to commiserate, and to inspire. Whether it is asking others for advice on how to answer the question “Mom, can you tell me the truth, are you the tooth fairy?”, or  simply “How much screen time is everyone allowing their kids to have each day?”, working parents at Convoy rely on each other and the pandemic has solidified that for many. 

In a recent Shipper Team meeting, Nikki Brown was chosen to share a recorded video and speak to the team about what working from home during the pandemic has been like for her, and how she’s been able to succeed as a working mom of two. In the video, you can hear Slack messages and text messages buzzing in the background and see her three year old daughter sitting on her lap, occasionally adding her commentary to the video. Nikki shared “if I wanted to really excel … I needed to take advantage of the resources that are available to me both at work and my personal life… It continues to be an exercise in humility for me. I don’t want to be an average mom or an average employee, and for me that meant I needed to get super clear on what tasks I could do and what I could ask others for help on… I needed to embrace the concept of ‘the village’.”

For 2021, Parents @ Convoy is focused on adding depth and structure to the resources and programming we provide for parents. To start, we heard from ERG members that in order to feel supported by Convoy as working parents, they needed to feel comfortable having open conversations with their managers about what they were going through and the challenges they were experiencing working from home. Because initiating these conversations with managers is understandably challenging for many working parents, Parents @ Convoy made Convoy’s People Team aware of these difficulties and HR quickly rolled out additional training for managers, helping them break the ice and initiate these conversations in respectful, productive manners. I can recall my manager, soon after we started working from home, pausing during a weekly 1:1 to calibrate how I was doing overall and understand what I needed to help me succeed. Simply creating space for this candor is crucial for employees’ well-being. We know that working parents who have a supportive and encouraging environment in their role as a parent tend to, in turn, be more productive and efficient employees. Freight doesn’t sleep and neither do some children. 

Through the struggles of the past year, however, there have been some silver linings. As Tucker Tillman, a Senior Manager on Convoy’s Account Management team shares, “Prior to COVID, I was off to work each day before my kids were awake and came home right at dinner time. On the weekdays, I really only saw my girls for about an hour each night. Even though the pandemic has been a struggle, I’ve spent the last year regularly having three meals a day with my girls and have been grateful for every second!”

With the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the past year, it has been amazing to see how adaptable, patient, and empathetic our co-workers have been to the ever-changing schedules of the family. Even the non-parents I work with regularly understand when I need to move a meeting last minute, show up a little late, or need some extra time to work on a project. This camaraderie is palpable across Convoy and enables everyone to show up and perform at their best both at their job and in their personal lives.

The Parents @ Convoy Employee Resource Group (ERG) strives to promote Convoy’s strategic goals by assisting the organization in recruiting, retaining, and advancing parents, strengthening teams by promoting diversity and inclusion at Convoy, serving as a resource for all Parents at Convoy, and positively influencing the organization by providing awareness, education, and support to ensure professional development of all employees.
If you or someone you know is interested in speaking to the parents community at Convoy, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at parents@convoy.com. We’re co-hosting a virtual event in Q3 2021 with Womxn @ Convoy discussing career mapping and looking for speakers.

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In 2021, we’ve put together an ambitious roadmap that structures our programming into four quarterly focus areas. In Q1, our theme has been “Setting Yourself Up For Success” by building good habits and routines. In Q2, we will focus on “Building Your Personal Brand”. These quarterly focus areas help structure the topics we discuss in our small groups, the external speakers we bring in, and the books we read for our book club.

For Q1, we chose to kick the year off with a joyful start, by reading The Book of Joy, by Douglas Carlton Abrams. After a tumultuous start to the year, the group wanted to read something uplifting that would feed the soul as we headed into yet another year of life and work under quarantine. The book’s explanation of joy as something that comes beyond material possessions, and from a deeper well of emotional and mental calm, was a great reminder of the strength we carry within ourselves. It was also an invitation to tap into the well of gratitude for what we have that so many others have lost–our jobs, our health, and each other. 

Our book club discussion was open to all ERG members, and was attended by roughly 20 (very active and engaged) members. We held the discussion over Zoom, and made very active use of the “reactions” button that allows members to “thumbs up” or “heart” to show support for another member’s response, or “raise hand” when someone wants to contribute without speaking over others. The discussion was an active one, and one of the book club participants even remarked that she “wished [she] had read this book earlier in the pandemic”, to elevate those feelings of calm and joy in the midst of such a volatile 2020. The book’s distinction between ephemeral happiness and that deeper sense of joy also forced us to reexamine what our own priorities and values are. Speaking personally, it was a joy to reflect on the mission of sustainability that Convoy has embarked on, and the progress we’ve made against it.

This book club discussion was, fittingly, sponsored by Third Culture Coffee. It’s fitting that with our discussion of health and happiness, Third Culture is a local business with a mission to create incredible drinks, while supporting their goals of diversity and sustainability.

As we think about our mental and physical wellness for this year and how we can more actively act on our values, we encourage our members to think about supporting local businesses that value sustainability.
If you or someone you know is interested in speaking to the Women@Convoy ERG on our upcoming themes (Q2: Building your personal brand; Q3: Mapping your career journey; Q4: Building personal wealth), please email us at womxn@convoy.com.

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Think about all the wonderful innovations we have because of women: The Fire Escape! Thank you Anna Connelly for thinking about the other perspective in 1887 and keeping others safe. Alice H. Parker’s work has kept us all warm and cozy since her patent in 1919 that paved the way for the modern day thermostat and heating furnace. Ada Lovelace infamously invented the first computer algorithm, literally making Convoy possible. And let’s not forget the invention of The Dishwasher, saving our kitchens from squalor (and I’m sure many relationships) since 1887 thanks to Josaphine Cochrane. Josephine, we salute you. 

International Women’s Day at Convoy 

Here at Convoy, we decided to take a slightly different spin on Women’s History Month and look internally at the stories our own women leaders bring to our community. What are the stories of their triumphs and struggles? What can we learn from their journey? 

Fittingly, on International Women’s Day, we hosted 5 small group sessions with women leaders from Convoy. Each, in turn, offering their own candid view on their paths to success and the road bumps they encountered along the way.

Advice from our female leaders

Melissa McCann-Tilton (VP, Global Revenue) is our fearless sales leader and chief! A commanding presence in any room and a stand-up comic at any spare moment, she helped us understand what it was like to succeed under circumstances of adversity. 

• Melissa’s advice on approaching problems and achieving results: “People who approach [a problem] with a sense of curiosity and growth are more successful than people who approach it from the perspective of ‘I’m owed it.’”

• On striving for what you want: “Always have empathy for the person on the other side.” 

• How to seek a career path and develop yourself: “Find people who are further along in their career than you and ask them how they got there.” “If you don’t have all the answers, it leads you to more possibilities.”

Shweta Narayan (Director, Product), the linchpin of our executive staff, joined us to talk about her winding road and the wisdom she has collected along the way. She shared her thoughts on leadership, supporting women and bouncing back: 

• Shweta, reached into her own network when she had a career setback and needed to bounce back, “I relied on my personal support”, she added, “don’t make decisions when emotions are heightened.”

• She also encouraged us to support other women in the workplace, “There’s so much you can get out of supporting each other.” and “It’s just a shame not to join forces.” 

Sunny Regulapati (Senior Director, Marketplace Growth), our Womxn@Convoy sponsor and newest mother of the bunch helped paint a picture of ruthless prioritization. Her key takeaways from the conversations were: 

• Leadership is all about decisiveness, vulnerability and self-awareness: “We don’t always have consistent direction, so taking action even without all the data or information marks a strong leader.” 

• Sunny encouraged the importance of helping other women by not necessarily waiting for the ‘right moment’ to promote them but making it a regular habit to promote them as often as opportunity permits. Sharing positive feedback consistently with each other can also go a long way in building confidence and empowering other women.

Lastly, Kristen Forecki (VP, Supply), our original female leader, Womxn@Convoy sponsor and fiercest ally from the beginning, shared her own story of growth alongside Convoy’s:

• Kristen believes the most important characteristic of a great leader is humility, and the most over-rated characteristic is over-confidence. “When you have true confidence, you’re able to approach issues with a lot more humility and be open to learning from others, and those are the people I think of as great leaders.” She adds, “Be confident in what you know, and then be open to exploring other ideas or learning more.”

• Kristen (like Sunny) also encouraged us to help promote other women in the workplace, “Do it on purpose and build each other up … you can’t go overboard on investing in each other.” 

• Kristen is no stranger to career pathing and networking. She gave some great advice about knowing what you want and getting there: “Be clear about what you want, so others can help you find it or help you get there.” When asked about creating a path, she cautioned us to remember that, “It’s often going to be more of a jungle gym than a ladder.”

Thank you to all of our fearless Convoy leaders for their mentorship and guidance. We loved taking a walk in their shoes to understand their history, their journey and how we can support each other during Women’s History Month!

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February is a special month at Convoy this year. Not only are we commemorating Black History Month, but we are also celebrating the six-month anniversary of Black@Convoy, one of our Employee Resource Groups (ERG). 

Black@Convoy’s mission is to represent and celebrate Black employees at Convoy. Black@ creates a supportive and inclusive community for our Black employees. We also focus on employee growth, allyship, recruitment and community engagement efforts. Over the past six months, we have hosted multiple events and taken several steps pursuant to the mission. From establishing a leadership council to organizing office hours to help coworkers create their voting plans for the November 2020 elections, Black@ has established roots within the company and is driving impact within the community. In October, we co-sponsored an event with Women@Convoy featuring Dr. Carmen McGee, an Atlanta-based OB/GYN specializing in breast health for women of color. We also hosted a virtual recruiting event at Spelman College to recruit Black women for Convoy roles in Operations and Engineering. Just last month Black@ co-sponsored a second event with Women@Convoy featuring speaker Keita Williams of Success Bully discussing tactics and strategies for setting and hitting goals in 2021. 

For Black History Month, Black@Convoy is hosting a series of events and workshops, including educational events to teach co-workers about the importance of Black History Month, spotlights on black-owned businesses, causes that support Black people, and more. We are also creating space for employees to speak and learn about the Black experience. To me, Black History Month is important because I wasn’t formally taught about Black history until I went to Spelman – a Historically Black College. Being at work, and being able to engage in activities that celebrate, honor, and recognize the culture and achievements of Black people, allows me to feel seen and further fuels my mission to drive DE&I efforts at Convoy.

In early February, Black@ hosted Dr. Yolanda Watson Spiva, President of Complete College America, to speak about her journey as a Black woman executive and provide tips to all employees on how to be successful in their career. These events are designed to foster a supportive and inclusive community at Convoy and build on the work that has already been underway.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2021, Black@Convoy will host more events to engage the community and increase their focus on ERG member engagement, retention, and recruitment. Events will include panel discussions featuring Black leaders both internal and external to Convoy, fireside chats, small group discussions about issues impacting Convoy’s Black employees, outside speakers, happy hours, and parties to build camaraderie. These early days of the Black@Convoy ERG have helped Convoy to become more inclusive, focus on equity, and stand against racism. We look forward to all we can accomplish as our company grows.

Convoy celebrates diversity in its carrier network. If you’re a carrier and want to learn about new opportunities, reach out to us at supplierdiversity@convoy.com or visit our supplier diversity page for more information.

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This year, we are focusing our content around quarterly themes and for Q1 the theme is Setting Yourself Up for Success: Establishing Good Habits and Routines. The remainder of the year will focus on areas including Developing Your Brand and Mapping Your Career Journey. Each quarter we host an external speaker on that topic, a book club for members featuring a book related to the subject, and monthly small group meetings so groups of women can discuss the topic in more detail and learn from each other. 

To kick off the Q1 theme, as well as 2021 programming, we co-hosted a workshop earlier this month with Black@Convoy, Convoy’s ERG for Black employees. This workshop focused on goal setting and was facilitated by Keita Williams of Success Bully. This event was open to all Convoy employees and had more than 100 attendees. This was a great chance to take a step back from a busy start to the year and think strategically about what we all want to accomplish, both professionally as well as personally. We discussed how to get clear on our values and how that will prove the drive to stick with our goals, the importance of an accountability buddy, and how to clarify your next step so big goals seem less intimidating. The part that really got the group’s attention was not only the need to get clear on what you will do to achieve your goals but also what you will not do – what you will be willing to give up to make time for what you say is important. It was clear that not giving this part as much attention is often how we get in our own way. 

During the remainder of this quarter, we will also host a time management workshop facilitated by Kelly Nolan, host a book club on The Book of Joy and celebrate Women’s History Month with a number of company-wide events. We look forward to sharing more about our journey this year and how our, and other ERGs, empower our members both professionally and personally. 

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At Convoy, we truly believe a small group of employees working together can build anything or solve any problem, just like Dan, Grant, and our first teammates did at the start of the company. We apply this belief every year during Moonshot Week, our hackathon-style event where employees pursue ideas or projects that have the potential to impact our company, internally or externally. 

During this year’s Moonshot Week in October, I surfaced a project idea to “create an employee resource group for Asians (& friends) at Convoy!”. 

With five days of collaboration and ideation, that idea became TransportASIAN, a fully fledged ERG with a punny name, a mission, executive sponsors, and a leadership team representing teams across Convoy. What’s even more amazing is my fellow leadership team members and I accomplished this without ever meeting in person! 

We’re excited to join Convoy’s growing list of ERGs including LatinX@Convoy, Pride@Convoy, and Black@Convoy with a mutual aim to foster community and belonging for all of our employees. We’re the first ERG for employees who are from Asia, have Asian ancestry, or are interested in Asian culture. Our mission is to promote Asian diversity within Convoy and celebrate Asian cultures. The Asian diaspora is huge, encompassing countries and cultures across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. We are intentional about our approach in highlighting the incredible variety across the diaspora, educating ourselves and our teammates in the process.

A few weeks after Moonshot 2020, we held our internal launch event with over 40 employees. We shared our initial priorities, held brainstorming sessions to hear from our members, and also celebrated Diwali (the annual Festival of Lights celebrated by South Asian cultures). 

What’s exciting about transportASIAN is the community we are building, even while we are all working from home. Daniel Chang, a TransportASIAN co-chair and member of Convoy’s Claims and Insurance team, puts it perfectly:  “We were sent home when I was one week into this job, so I didn’t have the chance to mingle with other employees at company events or around the office. I’m excited to connect with people from all over the company who share a similar background and interest as me. It has served as a means to bond with my coworkers despite being remote for nearly all of my time at Convoy so far.”

Building communities remotely has been challenging for me in my role leading Convoy’s events and engagement, and for our ERGs as well. Within transportASIAN, we’ve been intentional about applying what we’ve learned throughout this year, such as offering both synchronous and asynchronous ways to engage, and building that into our DNA. 

As 2021 approaches, we plan to keep the momentum going by testing more creative formats and ideas. In addition to growing our community, we will celebrate the Lunar New Year in February and spotlight Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May. We are excited about the changes we can influence and the community we hope to foster inside and outside of Convoy.

— Serene Chen

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Since the 1970s, people have been coming together all over America to celebrate Pride Month in June each year.  Pride is a commemoration of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 and celebrates the work it has taken, and acknowledges the work that is still needed, to achieve equal justice and equal opportunity for LGBTQIA+ Americans.  In Atlanta, GA, home of Convoy’s second headquarters, however, they do things a little differently.  Several years ago, Atlanta Pride was moved from its traditional dates in June, due to park and drought regulations in the city, to October, where they now host the nation’s largest celebration of National Coming Out Day every year.

This month, Convoy employees who are part of our LGBTQIA+ community in Atlanta teach us about what pride and identity mean to them.  Check out this video to hear what they have to say: 

If you are an LGBTQIA+ owned trucking company and would like to learn more about how you can start hauling with Convoy, or if you currently haul with Convoy and would like access to additional opportunities, please reach out to supplierdiversity@convoy.com or visit our supplier diversity page for more information.

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As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month across the United States this September, as well as Mexico’s Independence Day today, Convoy’s Latinx community is also celebrating an important milestone: The Latinx@Convoy Employee Resource Group (ERG) was established one year ago, in Fall 2019, with the aim of building a vibrant Latinx community at Convoy. A year on, we look back at some of the group’s important contributions to advancing an inclusive and diverse culture at Convoy. 

(For those unfamiliar with the term, Latinx is the gender-neutral form often used instead of Latino or Latina to refer to individuals with Latin American or Hispanic origins.)  

Organic origins

Like many community groups, Latinx@Convoy started informally — with colleagues gathering over lunch for Spanish-language conversation. Co-workers would pass by, hear the conversation and join the table. Eventually, these informal conversations became a set monthly lunch with the occasional “celebrity” guest: During one of the groups’ early gatherings, Convoy CEO Dan Lewis joined to talk about his time as a college student studying abroad in Chile — he even displayed his language skills by conversing fluently with the group in Spanish. By mid-2019, several participants decided to formalize the group, following in the footsteps of established Convoy ERGs like Women@Convoy and Parents@Convoy. 

Establishing goals

With guidance from Women@Convoy leadership, several members of the Latinx community at Convoy got together to identity shared goals and eventually landed on three focus areas:

• Building a sense of community among Latinx employees that promotes connections and supports career growth;
• Raising awareness of issues important to the Latinx community more broadly across Convoy; 
• Helping recruit Latinx candidates to open roles and help retain and develop them once they join. 

The group identified a volunteer Leadership Council to help drive these goals forward, currently composed of nine individuals who take the lead on various initiatives. Like all ERGs at Convoy, they also have an executive sponsor who helps guide the team and bridges the group with company leadership.

Membership in the group today reflects the diversity of the Latinx experience in the United States in many ways. “We have recent immigrants and the children of immigrants among our members,” said Latinx@Convoy Co-Chair Adolfo Estrada Durán, a Senior Operations Specialist. “There are members who studied abroad or lived in Latin America and Americans married to Latinx immigrants; Afro-Latinx and Asian-Latinx members; members with roots in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean; members whose native language is Spanish or Portuguese, members who learned one of the languages as an adult, and members who don’t speak the languages at all.”

Building community and a sense of belonging

The most important starting point for the group was to start building connections among members, particularly those who sit on different teams and don’t necessarily work together on a daily basis. Early on, they organized potlucks where members brought some of their favorite foods to share and established a shared Slack channel to share their experiences. 

It quickly became obvious that a critical role of the group was to provide a forum for members to talk about their experiences as Latinx people in the workplace and how identity has shaped their careers. 

For example, Francisco Alvarez, a Senior Research Scientist shared his experience growing up as a Cuban American at a time and in a community where there were very few other Latinx people. “As a way to avoid drawing unwanted attention to myself and avoid bullying, I started going by ‘Frank’ or ‘Frankie’ instead of my birth name,” he said. “It wasn’t until I graduated with my Ph.D. that I felt like I could bring my true self to work and start using my actual name.”

Sergio Muñoz, an IT Service Desk Technician who grew up in Michigan, talked about similar struggles embracing his Hispanic identity in the workplace. “A lot of my life, I always felt like I needed to speak and act a certain way to receive the approval of my peers — who more often than not have been white.”

Both Francisco and Sergio agree that the Latinx@Convoy ERG has provided a welcoming environment where they can talk about their experiences with co-workers who have a special understanding of what they have gone through. 

Raising awareness

For the Latinx@Convoy ERG, it is important to not just support each other, but also raise awareness more broadly across Convoy about issues relevant to the Latinx community. 

As the United States engaged in a broader societal conversation about racial injustice earlier this year, the Latinx@Convoy ERG had their own conversations about Latinx attitudes to what was going on. Some members talked about the Latinx community’s own experience with exclusion in the United States as well as the appreciation of many recent Latinx immigrants for the opportunities that the United States has offered. 

The group was also conscious of the long history of exclusion toward Afro-Latinx people — in the United States and in Latin America. About one in every 10 Latinx people in the United States is Afro-Latinx, including members of the Convoy community. “As an Afro-Latina it’s nice to see non-Black Latinxs stand with the Black community,” Kristie Richards, an Operations Associate, wrote to the group. “The one thing that I ask is that we all continue to stand by Black people both in and outside of our community and do the work of unlearning our biases and countering anti-Blackness when we see it in action.” 

More recently in August 2020, the Latinx@Convoy ERG invited Rep. Pramila Jayapal — who represents much of Seattle, including Convoy HQ, in the U.S. House of Representatives and who is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — to speak at Convoy in a virtual fireside chat, which I was honored to moderate as Convoy’s General Counsel. During the interview, Rep. Jayapal touched on themes such as immigrant rights, which the Latinx@Convoy ERG identified as an important issue. 

New challenges 

The Covid-19 pandemic has created new challenges for all workplaces, and particularly for members of under-represented groups. It is easier than ever for coworkers to retreat into their personal work-from-home bubbles, but it’s also precisely the moment when a sense of community is critical to employees’ success and wellbeing. Some lessons that Latinx@Convoy has drawn from its first year include: 

• It’s important for company leadership to be vocal in their support for ERG participation, making sure that front-line managers are empowered with the tools to recognize and value ERG members, including for junior and non-technical employees who might be more reluctant to participate in ERGs.
• Many ERG members, particularly early-career members, don’t necessarily know how to flag their ERG contributions to their direct managers or highlight and leverage that experience as a stepping stone in their career growth. ERG leaders should take an active role in publicly recognizing members’ contributions.

As we all celebrate Hispanic heritage this month, Latinx@Convoy is contributing to a more inclusive and diverse community at Convoy, all with the mission of building a more sustainable digital freight network. As ERG founding member Manuel Ocampo, concluded: “From farmworkers to astronauts and teachers to movie stars, Latinx Americans are proud to contribute to all areas of our society. I’m a proud Latino Software Engineer contributing to make our freight industry more efficient.”

If you are a Latinx-owned trucking company and would like to learn more about how you can start hauling with Convoy, or if you currently haul with Convoy and would like access to additional opportunities, please reach out to supplierdiversity@convoy.com or visit our supplier diversity page for more information.

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In the weeks following the murder of George Floyd by police, Convoy, like many other companies, put out a statement affirming our support for our Black employees and community members. In this statement, we acknowledged the centuries of privilege, ignorance, and inequalities inherent in our society as well as the role we have played in upholding these oppressive systems. We outlined the immediate steps we were taking to build diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into our DNA as we grow as a company and made commitments to fight systemic racial inequality.

Making statements and promises is not enough, and the actions we take need to be defined by the people who are most impacted. With that in mind, we are empowering our Black employees to help define the path forward and to hold us accountable. They in turn have formed Black@Convoy, an Employee Resource Group (ERG) to represent and celebrate Black employees at Convoy. Black@Convoy plans to create a supportive and inclusive community at Convoy, by promoting employee growth and allyship through recruitment and community engagement efforts.

Black@Convoy will start by educating Convoy employees about the issues and barriers that disproportionately affect the Black community. These issues include barriers to career growth, unwelcoming and racist attitudes of white colleagues, and forced assimilation into racist corporate cultures. “One barrier I have previously experienced as a result of having to assimilate to White normative culture is feeling uncomfortable wearing my natural curly hair (because of comments & stares)” says Gabbie Moore, a member of the Black@Convoy Leadership Council. “As a result of this discomfort, I felt pressured to straighten my hair, especially for job interviews, to ensure I could secure a role and be accepted at the company.”

By providing education, resources, and a space for Black voices, Convoy strives to be an effective advocate for our Black community members and an ally in fighting the issues they face. Black@Convoy has four primary goals:

1. Help grow Convoy into a more diverse and inclusive company.
2. Celebrate the unique experiences and culture that Black employees bring to the workplace.
3. Provide increased exposure to, and education about Black experiences and culture for the greater Convoy community.
4. Initiate and participate in the tough conversations regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

While forming the Black@Convoy ERG represents a step in the right direction, there are many tough conversations that still need to be had within Convoy and the trucking industry as a whole. “My advice to company leadership and allies is to make sure that you’re listening and creating feasible long-term solutions for the concerns, burdens, and issues that are being surfaced regarding DEI” says Moore. “Having the initial conversation regarding how to address DEI is a step in the right direction, but in order to truly be leaders in the incorporation of DEI efforts, we have to make sure that we support DEI holistically and that this doesn’t stop with solely a conversation. A primary example of how we can support DEI long term is to create a team specifically designed to work on DEI initiatives full-time and preferably make sure that the leader of that team is a member of a minority community.”

Black@Convoy will start making changes within Convoy by creating the space to have tough, but necessary conversations while fostering a community of employees and company leadership that has the knowledge, understanding, and openness to engage in these spaces. This will include panels with diverse tech leaders, networking and recruiting events, career workshops, and more. We want as many people as possible to be a part of this community and to participate in these critical conversations.

The formation of the Black@Convoy ERG is just the beginning of a long road towards racial equity at Convoy. Our intent in announcing this publicly is to maintain external accountability and hopefully inspire other companies within tech and freight to do the same. Convoy is far from perfect in how we have approached racial justice in the past but we are beginning the process of doing better and being better in order to build a more equitable community.

If you are a Black-owned trucking company and would like to learn more about how you can start hauling with Convoy, or if you currently haul with Convoy and would like access to additional opportunities, please reach out to supplierdiversity@convoy.com or visit our supplier diversity page for more information.

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