Liliana Blanco, MSOD

she/her/ella

I was raised in the San Francisco Mission District, and in 2019 for the third time since I was ten years old, I danced in San Francisco’s Carnaval. The theme was La Cultura Cura or Culture Heals. The healing and generative powers of culture is an ever-present theme in my life. At the confluence of my identity, culture, and my education, I find meaning, make sense of the world, and find my purpose. Born in Spain, I am bilingual and bicultural. I hold a BA in Multicultural and Gender Studies and a MA in Organizational Development. Before joining the tech world, I spent 20 years leveraging relationships across non-profit organizations championing informal science education, youth empowerment, college access, equity, and economic development.

For the last two years I have led global Belonging and Inclusion for Asana, a tech software company. At Asana I work to engender a sense of belonging for folks from historically marginalized communities by leading our employee resource group (ERG) program. ERGs are a way to center, empower, and finance employee run identity-based groups. Before Asana, for eight years, I was the Senior Administrative Director and Project Director of Diversity and Inclusion at the Exploratorium. My work at the Exploratorium allowed me to center culture as a way of knowing by amplifying Science and the Arts through an identity lens.

As a society, we can hold values like inclusion, equity and anti-racism. Still, unless important hallmark institutions, like museums, find ways to ensure that their practices reflect their values we will not witness the transformational power of positive organizational and cultural change.. Thinking about how new approaches can help us all lead creative institutions, like the Exploratorium (which recently celebrated its 50th birthday), into their next 50 years is why I am part of the Cambio team.