Jessica Hernandez - Nominee for Talent Innovator Award

Jessica Hernandez is on the University Recruiting team at Airbnb where she manages the summer intern program, new grad engagement, and recruits interns and new grads. Additionally, she is a Global Co-Lead for Juntos, Airbnb's employee resource group for Latinx/Hispanic employees. Prior to joining Airbnb, Jessica worked in the education/non-profit sector. She was a high school special education teacher in Chicago before making the switch to recruiting teachers. She cares deeply about increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups and uses her background to create talent programs focused on diversity and inclusion.

Career Highlight

Jessica was tasked to create a mentorship program for Airbnb's engineering Apprenticeship Program, which onboards people from non-traditional technical backgrounds into an engineering role. Mentors went through a training and the program was highly structured to ensure mentors can focus on providing support. 100% of apprentices were converted to full-time and attribute mentors for part of their success. The mentorship program model has now been used by various teams at Airbnb including the Legal Team, the Latinx Airfinity Group, and the Intern Program.