STEM Workforce Diversity
Aug 19, 2024
Industry veteran Laila Salguero serves as the chief diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officer at Peraton.
She’s been with the company for more than six years and is responsible for working across Peraton’s sectors and functions to support the company’s business outcomes through the targeted execution of its DEI goals. She partners with her peers on the executive leadership team to position DEI as a strategic advantage when pursuing new and existing contracts.
A major component of her team’s efforts is updating internal procedures and policies, and developing partnerships across the supply chain partnerships that promote diversity and inclusion.
Salguero’s team aligns Peraton’s health and wellness benefits with professional development opportunities to ensure the company remains competitive with the external DEI landscape. As a result, Peraton is nationally recognized as one of the leading employers for diversity, veterans, and people with disabilities (PWDs). Additionally, she’s charged with establishing and executing programs that support the broader enterprise, including the company’s employee resource groups.
“I’ve always been interested in taking on new challenges and finding creative ways to do things, but I didn’t know how expansive the opportunities were in STEM until I found myself in this world,” shares Salguero.
“The key to leadership is listening,” she continues. “When I became Peraton’s inaugural DEI officer, I conducted an extensive listening tour to learn about where challenges and opportunities were from the employees themselves. By listening you’re able to gain a 360-degree view of how the enterprise and its employees are faring.”
Salguero calls inclusion the “bedrock” of innovation. As she explains: “For any business to survive, it must embrace the unique perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences of its workforce. DEI isn’t a choice, but a necessity for success that allows businesses to establish paths for a brighter, more inclusive future.”
Salguero leverages the DEI team’s efforts to expand upon Peraton’s recruiting engagement, and create deeper relationships through strategic sponsorships and partnerships. For example, the company supports organizations like the annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards (BEYA) Conference, Dakota State University’s CybHER summer program, the Association of Women in Computing’s HackViolet hackathon, and many other community events. These outreach initiatives help develop a more diverse pipeline, and reinforce the message to those communities that diversity is important to Peraton and its employees.
She explains how, “at Peraton, the DEI function works closely with the human resources (HR) and talent acquisition teams to both retain the company’s employees and identify unique talent pools within underrepresented schools to support national security missions. We also partner with the growth and strategy teams to create a workplace that aligns with the mission requirements they’re seeing within our customer markets.”
Salguero adds: “The team and I also leverage our employee resource groups to allow the workforce to play a role in driving business outcomes. DEI must be fully integrated with the total business model.”
