Hady Méndez
The Employee Resource Group Line Gets Cut First Because It Is Measured Last.Five employee resource group posts in four years: global lead at Cloudflare, chapter co-president, a global leadership seat, an intersectionality chair, and an executive sponsorship at Salesforce. Then the seat above them all, Head of Equality at Slack. Hady Méndez has seen the ERG budget line from every side of the table, and she traces the case for cutting it to a measurement mistake. “Instead of tracking attendance or membership numbers, the real indicator is whether ERG members are getting promoted at the same rate as their non-ERG peers.”
Hady Méndez is the founder of Boldly Speaking LLC, author of Calladita No More, and former Head of Equality at Slack.
Measure Who Moves Up, Not Who Shows Up
The measurement question comes first because it decides everything downstream: what gets funded, what gets staffed, and which lines survive a cost review. “Most HR/DEI leaders and CFOs still see ERGs as social clubs rather than a leadership pipeline. And that’s a big mistake. Investing in ERGs and their members now generates ROI later, but only if you’re measuring the right thing.” A group measured on attendance produces events. A group measured on advancement produces candidates, and a budget line that can defend itself.
The test of that idea is a group Méndez inherited that had stopped functioning. “It was basically dead. No programming, no momentum, nothing happening.” Her first move was not a calendar of events. It was ownership: she brought the members together to build the group’s mission statement and logo from scratch, so the people the group existed for were its authors from day one.
The first real event made the measurement argument in miniature. During Hispanic Heritage Month, the group spotlighted the impact its own members were having on the LATAM region, a market many of them supported. Not a celebration adjacent to the business. A review of the business, delivered by the people doing it. By the end of that year, the group had gone from a handful of active members to around 40, roughly four times where it started, and was running Hispanic Heritage Month programming across six locations, up from zero the year before.
The Pushback That Proved the Point
The resistance came from an unexpected direction. When LATAM leaders first heard the plan, they asked why the group was talking about their region’s impact without involving them directly. Méndez explained the goal and the reasoning, and invited them in. They declined, and chose instead to prep the member who ended up presenting, so that he stood in front of the company representing both the business and the ERG.
She has been running into the same objection ever since. “That pushback taught me something I see over and over: folks thinking ERGs have no business talking about business impact. That perspective is still one I push back on today.” The revival worked precisely because it refused that boundary. The group did not earn its budget by filling rooms. It earned it by showing the company who its members were to the business.
The Instinct Came From Carrying a Number
The diagnostic Méndez runs on ERGs predates every equality title she has held. In her first business development year at Pershing, BNY Mellon’s clearing and custody firm, she was responsible for the entire non-US book, negotiating deal terms with C-level broker-dealer executives across LATAM, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. She finished 2008 as the number one salesperson on the team, measured by revenue, on a business development team of about five.
The moment she keeps from those years is a follow-up call after a demo, when a client asked about a premium compliance feature. “You don’t need it yet,” she told them. “The initial rollout will be limited, but later we’ll add more capabilities. That’s when it’ll be worth subscribing.” Walking away from an upsell was the method, not an exception to it. “I’ve always been a straight-shooter with clients, because I’m trying to be their trusted advisor, not just their vendor. The relationship builder in me knew that trust closes more deals than an unnecessary upsell ever will.”
That is the instinct now running inside Boldly Speaking. “A client will often come to me asking for a workshop, but when I dig in, what they actually need is an honest conversation that makes their employees feel seen.” The industry changed twice, from financial services to enterprise tech to advisory. The constituency changed with it, from broker-dealer executives to ERG members to the HR leaders who fund them. What did not change is the sequence: find the actual need before selling the deliverable. “I bring that same instinct into ERG work now: listen first, then give people what they actually need, not what’s easiest to sell them.”
Four Moves a Head of DEI Can Steal Before the Next Budget Review
Méndez sells no proprietary framework. What transfers is the set of moves she tested from inside the seats, and four of them travel into any ERG program now.
- First, survey your members, even when you share their identity. As a regional ERG leader, Méndez refused to assume that identifying with members meant knowing them, and ran surveys, listening sessions, and quarterly impact reports members could review and comment on. What came back often surprised her. “Assuming you know what your members want, even when you share their identity, is the fastest way to build programming nobody asked for.”
- Second, read falling engagement as a symptom before treating it as a verdict. When participation dropped in a group she led globally, her first theory was that her own programming had slipped. The real cause was different. “Burnout often looks like disinterest, but it’s not the same thing. And burnt-out employees rarely ask for what they actually need.” The correction was programming that asked less of members and offered more support, and vigilance from leaders before members disengage for good.
- Third, hold the line on who the group is for. “ERGs exist to offer support, development, and opportunity to their members first. Teaching allies is a welcome byproduct, but not the point.” The practical mechanism is a split calendar: member-only events alongside events open to all, so the group’s energy stays intentional without closing the door.
- Fourth, put your influence in service of the volunteers. As an executive sponsor, Méndez used her position to open doors for ERG leaders, nominating them into internal recognition programs and creating visibility for them with senior leadership, and she reset their scoreboard away from event counts. “It’s more important to have members who feel seen, celebrated, and safe in ERG spaces.”
Underneath all four sits the metric the whole argument stands on: promotion at the same rate as non-ERG peers, and movement into mission-critical roles. “That’s what separates optics from impact.”
Her closing case belongs to the leader who has just been told to defend the line: “Because in the end, if you’re looking to cut costs, don’t start with the one line item that’s actually building your organization’s future.”
Who Is Hady Méndez?
Hady Méndez is the founder and principal consultant of Boldly Speaking LLC, an ERG advisory and speaking practice based in Madrid, Spain, and the former Head of Equality at Slack, a Salesforce company. Her corporate career runs more than twenty-five years, beginning as a senior consultant at Accenture, then program management at Chase Home Finance, where she developed new business in Hispanic and Asian markets, and vice president roles at BNY Mellon’s Pershing across product management, business development, and relationship management, serving customers across LATAM, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Australia, Singapore, and Canada.
In 2013 she left it all for Franciscan Mission Service, spending two years on mission in Cochabamba, Bolivia, volunteering inside a women’s penitentiary and with organizations serving formerly incarcerated women, with the surrounding months devoted to preparing for mission and then reintegrating back into the United States. “This experience shows I can be in a boardroom with C-level executives just as easily as I can be running a support group in a prison. Not everyone can do both.”
She returned to enterprise tech at Cloudflare as a customer success manager and global lead of Latinflare, its Latinx employee resource group, then moved to Salesforce, where she was promoted to senior principal customer success manager on the company’s top customer account while holding a succession of ERG leadership posts, before becoming Head of Equality at Slack, harmonizing equality efforts across Salesforce and Slack. When that role ended in a layoff in March 2023, she founded Boldly Speaking. “I thought my career was over. Instead, it was the start of a whole new chapter, one where I consistently get to make the impact I actually want to make.”
Today Méndez advises ERGs and delivers workshops, fireside chats, and strategy sprints for organizations across enterprise technology, media, financial services, consumer brands, and the nonprofit sector. She hosts two LinkedIn Live shows, Latinas: Front & Center and Authors Unplugged, gave two years to Lean In Latinas as Director of Programs, and is the author of Calladita No More, her guide for career-minded Women of Color ready to lead with confidence. Her recent recognitions include a LinkedIn 2024 Top Coaching & Mentoring Voice designation and a place on the 2025 Top 50 Over 50 Latinas list from United Latinas. The seats kept changing for twenty-five years. The method never did: find out what the people in front of you actually need, give them that instead of what is easiest to sell, and measure what happens when they get it.
