Team size: 14

How do you prioritise diversity and inclusion within your legal department, and what initiatives have you implemented to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment?

Our team includes 14 individuals. 60% of our teammates are females (in leadership roles), and we have a 30% LGBTQ+ population with representation across four nationalities. Amazon Global Legal team is known for its commitment to its community and ProBono. In 2022, the global legal team volunteered over 38,000 hours. Our team collaborates in international initiatives and has driven local efforts to generate community engagement and not limit their help to legal advice. Also, our team acknowledged the need to collaborate in a cross-functional effort across Amazon Mexico to create a more significant impact in the community with DEI, Pro-bono and Community Engagement initiatives.

The Afghan Pro Bono Project is one example of our recent DEI, pro -bono and community engagement. In February 2023, we participated in a Global Pro Bono Project, which assisted a group of individuals (and their families) in Afghanistan with obtaining permission to go to the US or other countries through applications for humanitarian parole or different types of visas. These individuals are typically in hiding because they belong to highly threatened groups, such as LGBTQI+, legislators, athletes, journalists, lawyers, doctors, engineers and scientists.

Our legal team leads a cross-functional team involving stakeholders from other teams such as tax, accounting, public policy, retail, operations, compliance and more, with the principal objective of creating a simplified process for donating goods and money to NGOs in Mexico. We have successfully donated to NGOs: (i) Reinserta- the donation of a baby library; (ii) Casa de la Amistad IAP- the donation of USD$ 25k for 85 medical cancer treatments for kids; (iii) Enseña por Mexico IAP – we created a wish list composed of games, toys and didactic materials so that Amazon clients could support by donating and Amazon donated an equivalent to the entire donation.

Amazon MX Legal organised a community engagement initiative and invited all employees from across all business lines to donate clothes to further donate to ‘Las Vias’, which is a 300 community with no access to essential services. We wrapped up all the clothes and delivered them to Las Vias. We collected and donated more than 600 pieces (200 packets) of clothing for men, women, teenagers and babies; more than 20 shoe pairs; and 150 medicines for coughs, colds, pain relievers and multivitamins.

Our team partnered with the marketing team to implement an extraordinary project that will allow the use of Amazon’s technology in Gift Registries (baby and wedding registries) to feature donation initiatives. We want to provide visibility for existing registries with a cause through the Amazon homepage and outbound channels. For example, ‘NGO A’ (Non-governmental organisation) builds a gift registry; we will feature them on our internal channels to bring awareness to the cause, and customers will donate items directly to the NGOs.

One of our team members leads the women’s affinity group focused on empowering women in the organisation and supporting breaking the opportunity barriers for women in the workplace, building a local community to provide networking and development resources. Currently, we have 191 members (men and women). Our most relevant initiatives are (i) the Launch of MX Parents subchapter: We want to contribute and support MX Amazonians who face working parenthood, especially working mothers, as women already face unique challenges in the workplace and being a caregiver may increase them. We launched a parent’s community cultivating community connections while advocating for policies that help make Amazon a great place for parents to work; and (ii) a Mentorship programme: We kicked off a mentoring programme and have paired 55 mentor-mentees receiving positive anecdotes on the impact this has had in our community; (iii) we have hosted candid chats, book clubs, and listening circles, launched a newsletter, and actively sought opportunities across teams to engage other Amazonians in different activities.

We hosted an in-person chat, book discussion and happy hour with David Ambroz. David is the author of A Place Called Home, a memoir about growing up as a queer homeless kid and his subsequent years in foster care. This event marked record attendance in our office (+80 in-person attendees + remote attendees).

We partnered with Fundación K7 (an NGO) for an awareness panel on invisible disabilities. The conference featured the testimony of a deaf teenager, a young woman with epilepsy and a woman who suffers from panic attacks, all and each of them with their service dogs. This panel is also essential because we wanted to sensitise MX employees on invisible disabilities and how service dogs are indispensable for individuals with disabilities. Our legal team supports an employee who will be the first person in Mexico to work at our corporate office with a service dog (Dogs are not allowed in our building). As part of our plan to inject a diverse perspective into our outside counsel programmes, we experimented and extended the invitation to the partners/teams we work with. We attended 15 individuals (partners, associates, paralegals) across 3 law firms who expressed their recognition and gratitude for Amazon’s DEI efforts. All agreed to partner with Amazon to host diversity activities in 2023 in their law firms.

Our team participated with Amazon Web Services in an event with the US Department of State and the UN Foundation’s Girl Up Program to run a hands-on activity to inspire and mentor 100 girl campers from Mexico and Central America.