Ashley Cavazos: How Engaging with WOCAN Can Benefit You

Speaker 1: 0:00

Listeners, I have a quick call to action for all of you. Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. They really do mean a lot to us. Also, check us out on our new website at wwwgettingherlaincom we're jumping right in it today on how organizations dedicated to diversity and inclusion like WOCAN can benefit you as an individual or as a business, and how it helps to push auto industry culture forward.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Here we go. Hey, it's Kathleen and Shannon here, and this is Get in Her Lane. We are two automotive professionals diving deep into why women are so underrepresented in this industry and trying to make a positive change. So ride along with us as we discuss ideas and takeaways that can help everyone further this effort in the automotive world and beyond.

Speaker 1: 0:47

Hi, it's Jamie with Get in Her Lane, and I'm very excited about our episode today. We have on Ashley Cavazos. She is one of the executive chairs of Wocan Woman of Color Automotive Network and then she was also named Top 40 Under 40 by Automotive News in 2022. She is definitely a force to be reckoned with and we're so excited to be talking with her today. And, Ashley, welcome. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Yeah, hi, jamie, I am so excited to be on the Get in Her Lane podcast. After admiring from afar since you launched, I'm super honored to be here. So I am the marketing director for DeMontron Auto Group out of Houston, texas. I actually just relocated to Texas about a month and a half ago, but I've been an automotive for about 13 years. I've worked in the BDC space, internet marketing, done you know, implementation, a few things here and there, but excited to kind of just come on here and talk a little bit about Wocan and what we're up to and just get some awareness out for those who aren't aware of the organization.

Speaker 1: 1:52

Congrats on your move. How are you handling the Texas heat?

Speaker 2: 1:56

Oh my gosh. I mean I'm from Texas but I've been gone for 10 years living in Minnesota, and I have definitely I don't want to say cold blooded, because that sounds harsh, but my body has definitely adjusted to that temperature and coming down here, like the first week it was triple digits and I'm like why did I do this? Like I know there's winter Texans, but can there be like, summer Minnesotans or summer Midwesterners?

Speaker 1: 2:24

like.

Speaker 2: 2:25

Northerners, whatever you want to call it, just so we can get out of town for two to three months.

Speaker 1: 2:29

That's great. Well, with Wocan, I know that I discovered this organization about a year ago, through you actually, and it really intrigued me and I know that with the purpose of our podcast, which is aiming to push the automotive industry culture forward so we can attract, retain and grow more women in diversity in the industry, I saw this organization. I was like wow, there's just so many, so many things that line up here and I definitely wanted to highlight that on the episode today, especially because I think this is something that everybody needs to know about in the industry really, how we perhaps can be benefiting the organization and then, likewise, how partnering or supporting Wocan can help other organizations in the automotive industry. So I definitely wanted to bring that to light on the show today. So I did have a couple of questions for you. Can you explain Wocan more in depth and what its purpose is?

Speaker 2: 3:29

Our purpose is very similar to yours. It is to attract, retain and recruit more women in the automotive industry, women of color in particular. So when we look at automotive, women are what? Maybe 15 to 20% of the industry, and women of color are 6% of that workforce, and so there is a great opportunity in this industry, as we know. It's why we're here, it's why we love it, but it's just getting that education out and also retention, because a lot of times we are the only woman of color in the room even sometimes person of color in the room. I have been that person many times in my past and in current. It's just how it is and there's so much opportunity. I think of myself right. I was a temp receptionist when I came into the automotive industry and I look at where my career has flourished, thanks to people who have given me a chance and seen something in me, and so I wish I had had, because there were many times when I wanted to just like what am I doing? Let me get out of this industry. It's just not for me and I wish I had had other women to connect with that can understand just some of the unconscious bias I think that sometimes happens and bias at times as well. But Wilkhand's purpose. It started with four amazing women who co-found the group Carrie Wise, who is a CMO of AutoFi. Erica Wells, who's a senior sales manager for Walser Automotive Group. Amanda Gordon, who is a car dealership owner in Colorado, and then Patrice Banks, who has a girls auto clinic. She's four amazing women and it came at the height of everything happening with George Floyd and they just realized there is many organizations for women in automotive but there wasn't a place for women of color to have a safe space to kind of talk through some of the things that they were encountering at that time, and that's how Wilkhand came to be.

Speaker 1: 5:29

That's a great backstory on that. Tell me how, since you guys have formed, how do you guys do it? How do you guys find opportunities as an organization? How do you help the women that have decided to join and be a part of the Wilkhand community?

Speaker 2: 5:45

Yeah, I mean it's a number of things. My primary role is member engagement, so I want to make sure that we're communicating with our members in a number of things, whether it's what's happening in the industry, opportunities for conferences to connect together or just send people to members to conferences that they normally would not have had an opportunity to go to. We have speaker series, so we'll bring in some amazing women throughout the industry who have worked their way through and are doing some pretty incredible careers, and we bring in member meetups. So actually, like next week, we have a member meetup for anybody who wants to just have a. We're just very simple meeting on Zoom. We're going to break out into groups and get to know each other, and then we connect through our newsletter as well. So there's multiple forms of communication that we're putting out there. We have a Facebook group, we're talking on social, we're connecting people locally and they're meeting up as they find themselves like oh, like, who's all in North Carolina? Let's do a little coffee meetup. So, organically, they're kind of bringing that upon themselves as they connect through the organization.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Is there like a job order, or are there listings, or how does that work in terms of, or is it really just stemming from organic networking and finding opportunities that way?

Speaker 2: 7:05

So that is one of our focuses for this year. We actually branched out into separate committees because we have had phone calls where people are reaching out to us and they're wanting to find women or just in general they're looking for a role to fill. I don't even want to say they're just looking for women or women of color, but they have some ideas of a person they're looking for. They just know through the grapevine that there's this job out there, that somebody in the conversation fits, and so we're putting that together through the newsletter, through our Facebook group. We want to get that word out. A lot of times, and you know this as well as I do as women in general, we don't feel like we're always qualified when we see a position out there, Whereas men are like, oh yeah, they'll be 50% qualified and they're like I got this. And women are like, no, I need to be 110% qualified. So we want to just educate women and have them feel confident in themselves and see something. Let's help connect you and get you in front of whoever it is, to get that opportunity to talk to them, especially because a lot of times there is that unconscious bias where they don't have the opportunity if they just throw in an application. Sometimes it just happens where you're not going to get caught out as to where versus you know somebody that might be able to make a connection with a hiring manager.

Speaker 1: 8:24

Sure, I love that, especially because it's such a great resource for those employers looking to hire right. That's not necessarily kind of the traditional place they might try to advertise that they have an opening or a job spot.

Speaker 2: 8:38

Yes, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 8:40

From the auto industry perspective. Just obviously there's so many businesses, that entails retail, oems, vendors, independence. How can they provide more opportunities for women and women of color in the industry, and where could Wocan kind of fit in to that piece?

Speaker 2: 8:59

Yeah, I think getting the word out to more women and women of color. Again, going back to thinking about the confidence, I think just getting it through, like social media, is a big play at it. Right, we're not always looking at the job boards because we feel safe where we are sometimes or we're not sure that we quite fit what somebody might be looking for, so we're not always looking at the job boards. But if you connect through social media, share your postings online, have your employees seek out people themselves I mean, they're going to be your biggest advocate. And if you're looking to get the word out to us at Wocan, I would say reach out to any of us in the leadership team and we will make sure that we get this in front of our members. We have over 800 members in Wocan, so we have a strong group there from all over, from OEM to retail to transportation. We're kind of spread out across and not just the country we have, not just the United States, but all over the world. We have multiple countries as well.

Speaker 1: 10:06

That's fantastic For Wokan. What ideally are you looking for in terms of corporate support or sponsorship to be able to kind of align with you and help further your cause?

Speaker 2: 10:21

Yeah, we've had a number of sponsors. We're so great. I mean we are a non-profit so we rely on our sponsors to help us drive the funds needed for a lot of the events that we're doing speaker series, multiple things, whether it's sending, we do scholarships, for example. So this is where corporations can really help us out and get their name in front of the people in our organization. Or if they just have, they feel a passion right and they want to help women of color in the automotive industry, reach out to us. Let's connect on sponsorship opportunities. But really that's where it is and it's supporting other women. So we've done scholarships for it, furthering their education. And some have wanted to go to dealer school, for example, so we've helped support them with some funds for that entrepreneurship. There's a number of ways we're also working with sponsors on trying to connect with our youth as well, right, so connecting with women in underserved communities and just letting them know that there's an opportunity in the automotive industry, tech schools, sending them to conferences, like I mentioned earlier. There's so many different ways, depending on what the business's goal is, that we can work together on accomplishing that, and it may just be wanting to donate some money to help us with something like we have a name at event coming up in October, and so last year we had our first ever in-person event and we had sponsors help us with building a networking mixer. We did like speed dating, right, and we had a sponsor for that and you have to bring a speaker in. So all of those things cost, right, there's an expense to it.

Speaker 1: 12:08

So that's really cool. I was going to ask about the scholarship piece and you mentioned the academy. You know, obviously that's definitely an investment and then on the tech training side too, that is always a little bit of an investment to get started there. So that's really cool to see that your organization offers that type of scholarship opportunity for members.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Yeah, we're also working on leadership development training. It's still in the planning process so I can't be super specific on it, but it's really geared towards upper level, mid-level and entrepreneur leadership skills. So those are just some of the few things that we're working on with sponsors and then rolling out the outreach and education for emerging leaders as well high schoolers, middle schoolers.

Speaker 1: 12:53

That's really cool. So if you are an organization or a business, that cannot necessarily be a sponsor and support in that way. I did see on your website that there's an opportunity to be an ally. What does that mean? What does the ally-ship piece look like to you and what does it mean to Wocan?

Speaker 2: 13:14

Yeah, I'm so excited to talk about this just because we have an amazing leader in this space for us on our ally board. So Sandy Zanino is. She's got extensive HR experience and she's I always laugh with Sandy and I say she's more Latino than I am at times, but she is amazing and she supports us just wholeheartedly. She believes in what we're doing and so, with that said, the Ally Committee or board is something that Sandy is leading and they recognize the allies that the women of color experience is a different level of challenge that differs from non women of color. Just due to intersectionality, allies seek to continuously learn and examine their privileges and power and then find ways to use that to help further the message and mission of Wocan. They also work on learning ally skills, such as how to interrupt bias, because sometimes you don't always know you may spot it and you're not sure how to do that, and so Ally really helps you kind of find your space in that realm and how can you do it. And she'll work with our allies and I think so many, so many of them also will just call on her like, oh my gosh, sandy, how do I handle this? But she's a good resource and just connecting with other allies in general, right Understanding who wants to be part of this mission. I think there's a lot of great things that they have done and talked about and even brought awareness to us as well.

Speaker 1: 14:48

How many allies do you have in the organization, or should say the allies with the organization?

Speaker 2: 14:55

Oh gosh, I honestly cannot remember the last time I had seen it. I want to say there was maybe 50, but I want to say it's higher than that. But there is a definitely good group there and we're so thankful for that, because we cannot do this without our allies. Right, when I look at my career and how it has progressed, it was because of people who didn't see. They saw me for my skills and they gave me that opportunity and they were allies and they've always lifted me up to feel like I can bring my whole self to my job.

Speaker 1: 15:31

That's wonderful, and getting her lane is an ally of Wokan. I signed up earlier, so excited to see what that brings.

Speaker 2: 15:41

Yeah, you were already an ally. Now you've just become a member official.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Official official ally.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Yes.

Speaker 1: 15:49

That's fantastic. I think one of the other things we really want to resonate with our audience is just why this is so important. So, from your point of view, if you're not looking at organizations like Wokan to support or be an ally, what's the downside? What's the risk Like? What are we missing out on?

Speaker 2: 16:11

I think the risk is just showing that you are and it's not. I think it's just more education than it doesn't mean that you're not an ally for not connecting with us, right. But I think it means so much when you see an organization supporting and working with Wokan and even just bringing awareness to their employees. I was fortunate I worked for Walzer Automotive Group and we had women of Walzer, right. But if you don't have an ERG, if you don't have a place where your employees can connect with other people like them for example, walzer created the Asian Mind Alliance, right Another great ERG, because there is a huge community there these are the kind of things that you need to look at your organization, look at your community and figure out is this going to help me attract more people to my company that I want, and how can I bring awareness to my employees? Because maybe I don't have the support internally, but I can utilize Wokan in that sense right. If you are in a predominantly multicultural area, it would be really extremely beneficial for you to get something like Wokan in front of your employees, because we're not here to tell anybody like, hey, it's not at all going to make them feel like maybe they're at the wrong place, it's just going to give them a place to have people to connect with Because it is, I will say, being in this industry as long as I have. It has been a very lonely road and when I connected with Wokan, which was in the middle of a very I don't want to say Trenches but it was a roller coaster time in my career for me Emotionally, on so many things and what can happen to be created at just the right time that it helped me really power through that and know that I had the strength and the confidence to continue down the path that I was on, because that self-doubt kind of went away and also gave me the education on how to have the conversations that needed to be had with people at that time.

Speaker 1: 18:14

I think that's such a great point about using Wocan in that way, because a lot of companies or auto groups if you're just a single point and you're smaller and you're forming an ERG or having that available, it may just not be possible at all, just because you don't have enough people to form one. Being able to look outside and use a group like Wocan as a resource, I think, is an excellent point that you made and that's a great way to look at it.

Speaker 2: 18:41

Yeah, even OEMs. Right, we've talked with you, jamie, and we've worked with other OEMs as well, on how they can utilize us and they invite us to their offices just to help their own employees, because even at the OEM space, you are still working with diversity. I had spoken to a woman with a Hyundai OEM and she was the only woman, not just woman of color, but the only woman on her team. She had believe it was like 30 men who reported to her. Oh wow, good for her. Yeah, it was super good for her, right. But it was just like there are those opportunities out there for even OEMs to connect with us and help get it. Hey, why don't you test this out? And maybe you can help share it with your stores as well if you find that they're struggling with retention. Right, if you need to look at your numbers and look at your retention and figure out where is my turnover, why is it happening? And that's where Woken can help you.

Speaker 1: 19:45

That's great advice. Continuing on the advice topic here, what advice do you have for companies in the automotive industry that maybe don't know where to start, and what does starting this effort look like?

Speaker 2: 20:00

It kind of goes back to this previous answer, but I would say one my go-to is always Sandy Zadina. She can call and help you get started just because it's something she's so passionate about. But look at your data. Right, just start there. Look at your data. What if you know the industry average? Let's say the industry average is 6% women of color, or 15 to 20%. I'm not sure what the current number is. It's been a while. I don't know if you're familiar, jamie, of what women in general in the industry are, but I would look at that and just say am I there? And if I'm not there, what do I need to do to get there and where is my turnover happening? Do I have somebody in fixed ops? Do I have a female service manager? Do I have a female sales manager? Why don't we start there and see where we're at? Do I have any female on my show floor? Any females on my show floor? And if I do, but maybe a lot of times I've seen this happen in my own personal experience like there are women on your showroom floor but they're tougher, right, and they're like a little bit, sometimes a little bit harder, and you're like why? Why is this person you know, seem like they're angry all the time, like I've been that person myself, and they're like Ashley, what is it Like? Well, why don't you try working on the show floor and figure out what I have to deal with every day, or the conversations I have to listen to, and you might understand, you know what I have to go up against.

Speaker 1: 21:22

That's a great point. Thank you for sharing that. So what's happening with Wokan right now? Any news, any events coming up.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Yeah, we do. We have a lot going on right now. We just did a whole overall of our overhaul of our organization. We added these committees that I'm so excited about. We have co-chairs in them, so we're doing member engagement and events, we're doing scholarships and we're bringing in leadership and development and learning. We're also working on just trying to develop our members themselves, get some more awareness on the opportunities within it. So I was putting together a newsletter previously and now, with this committee, we're able to do it more consistently. So we have a newsletter that's coming to our members every other month that has some great topics and some fun ones, and then we also have a member meetup, like I kind of teased about. But we do have a member meetup next week. So if you are interested, I do recommend just come check it out. Right, if this is open for allies and women of color, if you're just wanting to figure out who we are and what is Wokan, come give us a test run. We have a member meetup next week. You can go to wocautonetworkcom, become a member and sign up for the member meetup. But we really try to keep this. We all understand we all have full time roles, right, but the primary focus is to connect with each other. So we do have a Facebook group. If you go like our Facebook page, there is a group attached to that as well. And then, super exciting, we're bringing back the Wokan event at the NAMAD convention in Miami in October. We sold this out, jamie, last year. It was beyond our dreams and expectations to see that many women come together in a room. It felt like going to church. There were a lot of tears shed, we had an amazing speaker and we just had never experienced that space before. And so we're bringing it back. So we're so thankful to NAMAD and the team for inviting us and giving us this space to hold this event. But if you are interested, stay tuned because we do have details coming on that in October and we'd love to see anybody who's going to be out there there and stop by. And even if you can't make the event, just stop by and say hi or reach out to myself. I'd love to connect you with some members.

Speaker 1: 23:51

Perfect, I love that. Thanks for sharing all that great info and if anybody wants to get in touch with you personally, Ashley, LinkedIn or what's the best way- yeah, I would say LinkedIn is definitely the best way you can find me on.

Speaker 2: 24:03

There is Ashley Cobosso's, and shoot me a message, send me a request to follow. I love hearing from people in this industry and connecting. I'm a relationship builder. That's just who I am. I grew up in the radio business and grew up around people. My dad has 11 brothers and sisters. My mom has seven, so I just love connecting with people. Yes, I big, big Hispanic family, so reach out to me. I'd love to just get to know anybody who wants to talk more or just meet in general.

Speaker 1: 24:35

Perfect. Well, it was so wonderful having you on today. Thank you for sharing so much about Wocan and just creating that awareness. I think that is great in furthering both of our efforts out there in the industry.

Speaker 2: 24:48

Yeah, thank you so much, Jamie and Jen, and get her lane. I'm so, so honored to be here.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Thanks so much, Ashley.