Vista, a Cimpress company, is the design and marketing partner to millions of small businesses around the world. We connected with Veronica Acevedo, Director of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, to talk about what led her to Vista, the work she is doing, and how it makes a difference to the lives of her coworkers.
Describe your career journey and how you landed at Vista.
I am a marketer at heart; I was that child who made a sales pitch to her parents for a dog, who created schoolyard games that catered to different interests, who connected old friends with new ones by finding the commonality. I studied marketing in college and started my career formally in sales/marketing before I learned about Human Resources and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI). I was very involved in employee resource groups and then learned that there was a team behind them focused on workplace culture, so I networked with different HR folks to understand more about the function and how they support and empower the business, and when an opening came up on the DEI team, I went for it. I traded my customers from external consumers/shoppers to my team members at work, and I transferred my marketing skills to better understand what makes people of all backgrounds and identities feel supported, recognized, empowered to work where they do. I am energized by being a founding member of DEI teams, of building a strong foundation and meeting people where they are, or being nimble and trying new pilots to learn what works. Vista called out to me in their mission to be the marketing and design partner for small businesses. As a new mom, I also wanted a remote role that would maximize my work-life harmony, and Vista’s remote-first working style has done just that. Remote-first has proven to accelerate the diversity at a company, and the investment in both this working style and in building up a DEI function motivated me to join the Vista team.
What does the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion team do?
At Vista, our DEI team believes in the unique contributions of everyone within a diverse global organization. We strive to role model and live an inclusive culture of fairness, respect and belonging for all. And we aim to work together to empower each other, creating a space in which each of us can spark our next great idea. We define DEI as follows:
- Diversity: Diversity is defined as a company understanding, accepting, and valuing differences between people of different races, ethnicities, genders, ages, religions, national origin, care-giver status, disabilities, and sexual orientations, as well as differences in approaches to problem-solving, neurodivergence, skill sets, experiences, and knowledge.
- Equity: Equity is the fair treatment for everyone – equality of opportunities, access, and resources – while actively addressing historical and systemic advantages and barriers.
- Inclusion: Inclusion is a culture in which everyone is valued, respected and supported for their unique contributions. It’s how we intentionally bring together those contributions to best innovate and to help each member of our small business and consumer communities live their dreams.
Our global DEI team is positioned in the Human Resources function, allowing us to strategically partner with HR Business Partners, Benefits & Wellness, Talent Acquisition and Employee Relations to build equitable people processes, from employer branding and hiring, performance reviews and manager support, through to stay and exit interviews. We also help facilitate safe spaces for under-represented communities by reviewing team member sentiment data, creating learning & development opportunities, benchmarking against external best practices and creating sustainable processes for employee resource groups. One of our valued behaviors at Vista is to “find, grow, and support great people,” and we take that to mean ALL people—including those who have been historically marginalized or under-represented. This means that not only is attracting and retaining great people important to us, but so is supporting them and their unique experiences/perspectives.
What is one proud moment from your time working at Vista?
Transparency is so important to DEI work- it allows us to tell our people that we hear them, we see them, we understand them, and we are working on ways to improve. I am proud of having the opportunity to organize our internal annual DEI report, a comprehensive review of the past year’s DEI efforts, data, highlights and opportunities. As someone new to Vista, this type of work allowed me to pull together all the pieces around the org that were created to build a sense of inclusion for our people. It allowed me to be data-driven, and review representation of different genders, races/ethnicities over the year, as well as sentiment data by the same groupings. It helped me pull together our opportunities ahead and where our team can meet people where they are, and start having immediate impact. The report calls on everyone to collectively work towards our ambitious DEI goals, which include increasing the representation of women in key leader roles to 50% by the year 2025, and increasing U.S. based key leader representation from historically underrepresented minority groups to 15% by the same year. It calls for a continuous review of inclusion sentiment in our team member surveys by managers and HR partners, flagging opportunities to create enhanced learning or investigate perceptions of inequality, bullying, or discrimination. And if someone needs helps with any of these goals, there are examples of what is working around the org in the report, as well as the open call from the DEI team to bring us in to help.
What is challenging about the work you do?
There is the emotional toll of DEI work because you are going up against systems of oppression, trying to unlearn, re-learn, and educate others on ways of working that are more inclusive, while also navigating these systems yourself (I lack gender and racial/ethnic privilege as a Latina woman and constantly read the same data that shows my people are barely advancing corporately despite our best intentions to do so)… And, sometimes DEI can be viewed as “nice to have/ extra-curricular” type of work, even though it is critical in supporting our team members as they pursue their core business objectives. It has helped me to always keep my “marketing hat” on, to keep the sales pitches ready for why this work is valuable, and to never lose track of the meaningful impact of this work, even if it is felt one person at a time.
What excites you about the future?
I am motivated by all the opportunities to build and sustain new projects and ways of working at a company that is ready for it, to work alongside others in chasing those ambitious DEI goals. I am excited to help my team grow in their learning and in their confidence as DEI professionals. And I am eager to continue learning about experiences that are different than mine to not only shape a more inclusive Vista, but to also raise a child who will think and act with DEI in mind.
