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Conexión is a leadership development organization founded by Phyllis Barajas that matches mentees, very often Latino and those of Latin heritage, with senior-level mentors and also brings each cohort together for an eleven-month, curated curriculum focused on leadership, identity, and the often unwritten rules of advancement.
The last time HE spoke with Barajas was just a year shy of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a stress test for the nonprofit, but it would also evolve the organization in ways that have allowed it to blossom into twenty-six states. And with the addition of seasoned professional chief operating officer Karina Barreto, rising talent, director of business development and engagement Carlos Vasquez, and program manager Genesis Garcia-Carrasco, Barajas is confident that the organization she built from the ground up will continue to grow and evolve with strong leadership, fresh energy, and new ideas.
But Conexión had to make it through COVID-19.
In 2020, the organization was still fairly Boston-exclusive. Cohorts met in person at MIT and corporate offices around the city. One mentee was able to join from Texas, and Conexión found him a mentor in Oklahoma, but what seemed to differentiate Conexión was putting people in proximity to each other to learn, grow, and spend time together.
Those meeting rooms disappeared overnight. As the world went virtual in 2020, Barajas and company had to figure out whether Conexión could evolve without losing what made it special in the first place.
“I’m proud of Carlos and us in particular,” Barajas says. “We, with Carlos’s expertise, were able to pivot immediately to a virtual format and make those meetings as seamless as possible. I know everyone has collectively tried to forget those early days, but remember getting stuck in virtual waiting rooms for minutes on end? Remember the learning curve and how much it seemed not to work? We didn’t have any of that. In fact, the pandemic opened us up to finding mentors in new locations like Chicago, Atlanta, and Seattle.”
Conexión has been able to grow in new climates, like Montana, and match them with mentors. It’s particularly important for those less populated locations where mentees are likely to be dealing with issues of isolation and a lack of community. Barajas says she was so heartened to hear that the mentee decided to go back to his traditional name, not the Americanized version that he thought he’d needed to get ahead in corporate America. It may sound like a small win, but those wins multiply across the US.
Those wins materialized with new leaders like Karina Barreto and Carlos Vasquez, immigrants who have made their world a better place and are now in leadership positions at Conexión.
Barreto, inaugural COO, landed a role at MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences through her interaction with Conexión in the early 2011s. Her career spans finance, strategy, and operations across corporate and non profit organizations, including MIT, GE, EMC, and Converse (Nike) with leadership in Finance, Six Sigma and diversity and inclusion. Her work is now focused on building the infrastructure that can sustain Conexión past Barajas’s time as CEO. Although new in her role, Barajas says Barreto has already made a lasting impact.
Vasquez, Barajas smiles, is a walking advertisement for Conexión. A lawyer from the Dominican Republic, he moved to the Boston area a decade ago and found himself struggling to find meaningful work and starved for community. A friend invited him to a Conexión event. He walked into the room of 175 professionals and knew he’d found a home.
Today, the director is helping grow Conexión’s footprint and organization network while also modeling what it means to, in his words, “always bring one along.” It’s a phrase he picked up through Conexión and one close to his heart, among many more, today.
Together, Barajas, Barreto, and Vasquez are leading Conexión into its next chapter. The organization’s flagship program is anchored in one-to-one executive mentoring, its defining strength, and by an eleven-month peer-to-peer cohort-based experience for early- and mid-career professionals with a structured monthly curriculum.
There have been evolutions. The organization now welcomes a small number of non-Latino participants—people who are serious about understanding twenty-first-century demographics and want to deepen their cultural intelligence alongside Latino peers.
In cohort conversations, a New Zealander’s reflections on Indigenous identity might sit alongside the story of a Peruvian transplant navigating US corporate hierarchy or a former military kid charting the overlap between rank-based cultures and Latino norms of respect.
Conexión is also asking more of its alumni. Barajas and the newer leaders are explicit: say yes when you’re tapped for a board, a spotlight, or a stretch role. Don’t mistake visibility for vanity. In their view, stepping into those positions is part of the responsibility that comes with access. It ensures that Latino perspectives are in the rooms where strategy is set and futures are decided.
There’s another line that runs through Conexión. This time, it’s one Barajas leans on. “Demographics is destiny.”
The United States is already living the demographic future that many companies still describe as if it were decades away. After twenty years, one pandemic, and a rapid shift from local to national, Conexión is betting that the leaders who will thrive in that reality will be the ones who understand culture not as a side conversation, but as central to how they lead, and who they bring along with them.
