Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Puerto Rico, Eric came to the US mainland to attend college. He has a Bachelor of Arts from Boston College, and a Master of Arts in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix. After college, while dancing professionally in Boston, Eric stumbled into contract work at Fidelity Investments which began his 30+ year career in (mostly) Financial Services. Fidelity Investments took him from Boston to Cincinnati, OH where he lived for 25 years, met his husband, Jon, and raised his son, Pablo. In the Financial Services sector, Eric has worked for companies such as USBank, Western & Southern Financial Group, Citi, and Capital One which moved him back to the east coast – New York City. Outside of Financial Services, Eric has worked for companies such as The E.W. Scripps Company, Meta - parent company of Facebook, and now, Vroom. His Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) journey began over 10 years ago designing and developing differential investment programs for Women in Financial Services. This effort progressed into developing programs to increase representation of People of Color in Financial Services. Over the last six years, his career has progressed into designing D&I strategies and plans for organizations; coaching Executives on D&I matters, language and the execution of plans; looking at systems where bias needs to be mitigated; and still designing, developing and deploying programs that build cultures where employees feel seen, heard, valued and where they know they have an equal and fair opportunity to succeed. Today, his work is intensely focused on identities - individual and group - and how they can be leveraged to achieve organizational goals. Eric is a cisgender, gay, Latinx human who identifies as a man. His pronouns are he/him/his/él. He is an educator by vocation, a community leader, and an empty nester. He feels fortunate that his vocation, his career, and his work all align in how he approaches life and work first as a learner and then a teacher. He now lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his husband.