Sara Gonzales-Erhan’s unique journey to her current role as the legal director for customer
trust, products, and operations at cloud computing company Nutanix Inc. has made her an impactful leader not just in law but in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Gonzales-Erhan is particularly dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals, and has even founded a corporate DEI affinity group for people connected to that community.
In all of these efforts, Gonzales-Erhan has been inspired by her son, who is neurodivergent and would directly benefit from similar efforts. The lawyer’s powerful connection to individuals whose lives may not fit a traditional narrative has made her an empathetic and compassionate leader whose impact is felt far beyond her day job.
Gonzales-Erhan was kind enough to sit down with Hispanic Executive to discuss her journey, her son’s unique circumstances, and the need for advocacy for those who often struggle to be heard.
Could you talk a little bit about your career trajectory and some of the impactful experiences that have helped inform your leadership?
A huge influence as a young child was having parents who felt it was extremely important not only to be inclusive but to acknowledge and accept differences. When we think about unconscious bias, often we think of the negative, but I truly believe that my parent’s influence and focus on this led me to become more “person focused” rather than just appreciating specific skills and attributes (or immediately noticing differing abilities in these).
My parents had the wisdom and foresight to send me to a summer camp for a few years that was for both “regularly” abled and “dis” abled children. We participated in the same activities, but I was also given the opportunity to witness the everyday challenges faced by the disabled children in my group.
If you’ve never had to navigate it for yourself, you simply never think about how you are going to guide a wheelchair down a steep hill or what it requires to use a public restroom when you have mobility, visual, or developmental impairments. Seeing this part of the human experience up close was hugely impactful on my interactions toward other people generally.
It wasn’t until law school that I realized that there was potential for me to have influence in this area professionally. I took a part-time job at a law firm and one of the founding partners, who had been mobility-challenged himself, was one of the nation’s first vocal disability lawyers: he won cases to support inclusion of people in wheelchairs or who were blind/deaf on juries as well as cases that guaranteed equal access to public buildings and transportation, and generally championed a level playing field for the disabled. Unfortunately, he passed away a couple years before I worked there, but his passion and dedication to this cause was still evident in the firm and it definitely steered me into more of a public interest bent.
Fast-forward twenty years, and I’ve been faced with raising my own child with developmental disability and mental illness. Without these early experiences, I think I would have been overwhelmed or paralyzed or both. Instead (much to my own surprise)