Our Team
Lizette Ibarra
CEO & Founder | Miami, FL
With 20+ years of experience, Lizette is a seasoned Career Strategist, an achieved entrepreneur, Cornell University Certified Executive Search & Leadership consultant, & Six Sigma Champion. She has successfully navigated the corporate and management consulting landscape throughout her career, leading significant transformations in the organizations she has served. As an entrepreneur, Lizette has founded and led award-winning (CNN expansion, 30 thriving entrepreneurs on their 30's), intentionally women-owned & led boutique executive search firms in Mexico and the U.S. . As a Women's advocate, Lizette has been a frequent keynote speaker and guest on diversity and career strategy panels and social media broadcasts.
Lizette specializes in executive & professional search, talent attraction and retention, executive career transition & coaching, personal branding for executives, and serves clients across the U.S. and Latin America. As a certified Diversity Recruiter, Six Sigma Champion, and Career Strategist, Lizette has successfully led more than 170 executive-level searches and contributed to the placement of more than 2,500 professionals.
Lizette has served as a board member of IMSA Executive Search, leading the expansion strategy for the Americas Region. She also served as Vicepresident of Diversity and Board Member of ERIAC Human Capital Association in Monterrey, Mexico. She currently serves on the board of the Business and Administration Graduate School at the Panamerican University (UP) and CapacitHadas, a non-profit organization dedicated to dignifying and improving women's employment, education, and living conditions housekeepers in Mexico.
Lizette has her bachelor's in Industrial Relations from ITESO Guadalajara and a Master’s Degree in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) from Instituto de Programacion Neurolinguistica. She has a certification from Harvard Business School in the Leading Professional Service Firms program and an Advanced Certification in Executive Search and Leadership Consulting by Cornell University.
Lizette is also a wife and proud mom of two, Diego and Valeria. As an avid tennis player in her free time has competed at state and national leagues and championships for Florida State and enjoys leading adult and children's teams in her community. She also enjoys traveling, cooking, good food & wine, and good company to go along!
Alejandro Romo
President | Latina Chief Rising | Miami, FL
As the President of Latina Chief Rising, Alejandro is on a mission to help companies become more successful, innovative, and profitable by advising them to build and integrate equal and diverse leadership teams. He has an excellent eye for finding, attracting, and developing outstanding emerging women leaders and putting them on the right path to achieve their fullest potential.
With 23+ years of experience and a proven track record in PepsiCo, one of the most admired companies to work for, Alejandro understood early in his career as a leader that having more women advance to leadership roles was vital for the company's success: under his flagship, he successfully built and led gender-equal teams and propelled the career of several women that have climbed the corporate ladder by being a relentless advocate of equalism, but also by designing, implementing, and executing world-class DE&I initiatives and practices.
Alejandro's broad Human Capital experience spans across different business segments and geographies– Commercial, Manufacturing, and Corporate Functions in North and Latin American markets. He's been particularly successful in a) Executing Business & Process Transformations: Successful implementation of Talent Acquisition function in Latin America b) Growing Profitability: G&A productivity management, HR world-class processes, and SLA implementation d) Building & Developing DE&I strategies: Designed & Implemented disruptive sources of talent to improve female representation e) Inspirational Leadership: active mentor for talent development.
Alejandro studied at the ITESO Guadalajara, Mexico, where he earned a Bachelor of Industrial Relations. He received his Hogan Assessments and World Class Employer Branding certification from the Employer Branding Academy (Universum). He currently serves on the board of directors of the Latino Professionals (California), Pan American University (Mexico), and the academic advisory board of ITESO, Jesuit University (Mexico)
Benjamin Lynch
Managing Partner | Seattle,WA
For more than 30 years, Benjamin has worked across Latin America and the United States developing high-functioning, autonomous teams. His passion is the nurturing of the right people in the right roles to maximize a sustained and ever-increasing level of personal and organizational growth.
He has been called the most “Hispanic gringo”, or the most “gringo Hispanic” depending on the situation, for his ability to move between cultures and seamlessly adapt to a situation. His underlying mission is to share the richness of cultures across borders and there is no better way to do the same than through bringing diverse talent to companies.
Benjamin was first introduced to the richness of the talent in Latin America when he was sent as an expatriate to Mexico City in his early 20’s. Starting with that experience he has built effective and diverse teams that long outlived their inception.
He is a Certified Public Accountant and has worked at 2 of the Big Four accounting firms, including at the partner level. He is a Certified Executive Coach by the College of Executive Coaching and is passionate for the success of the people he has coached across ages, industries and career stage. The consulting credentials are complemented by over a dozen years in in corporate leadership roles. His career has found him living in Houston, Mexico City, Dallas, Monterrey, Chicago and Seattle, crossing between consulting/public accounting in leading firms of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mercer and KPMG and corporate roles in fast-moving consumer goods and electronic commerce..
His experience has led to fluency across languages, industries, functions and cultures. P&L responsibility has contributed to developing business empathy, balancing business stickiness with sustainability. Ben has a Bachelor’s degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas as well as a Master of Business Administration from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is a highly spiritual hiker, blogger, student, knitter, sewist and is always interested in learning a new craft or life skill.
Adriana Ferrer
Associate Partner | Dallas,TX
In a universe full of possibilities, I connect and open pathways for development in the right moment. With deep understanding of needs, wants, diverse teams and future fit I provide growth choices for clients as much as for candidates. I take full ownership of the process from clarifying the clients' situation to well past the on-boarding of the hire. I recognize people's natural talents through empathy, connection, and experience.
I’m an organizational psychologist, with a profund education in Humanistic Gestalt Therapy and a Gallup Certified Coach with more than 15 years of experience in Human Resources, Consulting and Head Hunting.
I have a strong inquisitive drive and am passionate about talent and strengths, self-reflection, hunting for possibilities, creation of new realities - new ways of thinking, justice, freedom and living “la vida bonita”. I’m mom of an amazing girl. Love spirituality, a good fondue, and a good conversation.
Nelly Gomez
Associate Partner | Monterrey, Mexico
I am a passionate and dedicated HR professional with strong ethical values, helping to deliver business advantage and transforming lives by connecting great talent together with organizations. I take care of end-to-end recruitment process with a clear and firm purpose towards diversity, an obsession to exceed the expectations of our clients, a keen sense of inclusiveness and objectivity in evaluating candidates and advising our clients.
I have a Bachelor's degree in Human Resources from UDEM, Universidad de Monterrey, and a 12-year career in talent attraction & retention. I am also a wife and mom of two beautiful children, love to spend time with my family and I enjoy eating good food and helping others.
Laura Melgoza
Associate Partner | Los Angeles, CA
With over 20 years of talent acquisition experience as both an agency and in-house recruiter, Laura is skilled at building data-driven search strategies to help organizations meet hiring goals and diversify their talent. Laura has hands-on and leadership experience managing end-to-end recruitment strategies and execution, including data analytics, job analysis, talent intelligence research, talent mapping, candidate engagement, and technical skills and leadership attributes evaluation.
Before joining Latina Chief, Laura spent nearly 9 years at Amazon, where she intentionally chose roles that aligned with her passion for fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture. Within Amazon operations, she specialized in recruiting executive leaders resulting in 85% diverse hires.
Laura’s recruiting experience spans across different industries and geographies, including Manufacturing, Supply Chain, E-Commerce, Utilities, Airport Operations, and Cloud Technology across the USA, Canada, and Latin America.
Beyond her professional pursuits, Laura has a deep appreciation for nature. She enjoys running on the beach and hiking in Southern California. Additionally, she practices yoga, meditation, and natural healing techniques.