Testimonials

After only a couple of calls with Frances, I can proudly vouch for her kindness and resourcefulness. Given her busy schedule, she still took the time to have a mentoring session with me and I now have much more clarity in what I need to focus on to advance my career as a developer. Frances gives direct, no-nonsense advice, a quality I deeply respect in people.

Hearing about Frances’ background in tech was also very inspiring and reassuring, not only is she keen on advocating for more diversity in tech but she does the actual work to see it through. Without a doubt, Frances is a trailblazer in the tech industry and I feel incredibly lucky to have connected with her.

Frances is honest, dependable and incredible hard-working. Frances is a truly valuable asset to any team. Along with her work ethic and passion for excellence, she has always been an absolute joy to work with. She is a true team player, and always manages to foster positive discussions and bring the best out of others.

I’m very thankful with Frances for supporting my non-profit Mindot, helping us organize student (international and local) visits to Slack in San Francisco and New York City + inspiring and mentoring our young leaders through our MindWeek and MindGirl programs. Frances has also mentored me and given her advise to increase our impact. I confidently recommend Frances for her outstanding leadership and dedication.

I remember back when conversations looked like “Should we apply to be an ERG? Who wants to be the lead? How often should we meet?” and you stepped up every time. Remember, when Fuego wasn’t even named Fuego?! I don’t even remember what it was anymore.

It does take a lot of work and you did a lot of behind the scenes work that needed to be done to set Fuego up for success.

You have been a crucial part of this comunidad. From the applying Fuego to be an ERG, to bringing it to life with the leads team, to structuring it on what it is today.

You played a huge role. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

Gracias por todo.

I remember joining Slack as a wee little intern and looking for my people as soon as I joined and was told to have a 1:1 with you.

We talked about how there wasn’t that much Latinx representation in tech and how techqueria was helping with that and it inspired me SO much.

Thank you so much for everything you did para la cultural!!

You’re one of my biggest role models in tech and I’m so grateful that I got to learn so much from you while working on Fuego.

I had the honor to have a session with Frances as she is kind and informative. Her story that was different from others in the way she pursued her engineering career is what makes her inspiring and unique. She is amazing in guiding someone on what to do in certain phases of their lives which in my case is a college student looking for internships. She is very engaged and genuine in wanting to help by putting lots of time for us. She is also somebody that wants to grow above and beyond by even asking for feedback and expressing her desire to move up the ladder. Frances is a motivating person that will do amazing in no matter what position she is in as she will put her hard work.

If you are considering a career pivot to tech, I highly recommended a session with Frances Colonel! Her advice was direct, beneficial, and keenly insightful. My session with Frances helped inform my next steps in the field.

Frances is a dynamic powerhouse that leaves anything that she touches better than she encountered it.

She’s a proactive starter. She advocated for the launch of the Fuego Incubator and then took the helms of the fledgeling group. Organizing a fledgling ERG from scratch is actually a very challenging thing.

You have to build community/identity, create a mission and focus for your working group, and drive a group of 5 or more people who may have never worked together toward a central goal.

In driving towards the goals for Fuego, Frances was organized, creating documentation as she went. Identifying the most effective tool to drive organization and accountability for the team.

The Fuego incubator was able launch Slack’s first ever Heritage Celebration–during a Pandemic and while all remote. And yet, this month-long project was delivered so smoothly to the company–it seemed as though it had been in existence before.

Frances was able to focus on craft and excellence –while moving at a fast clip.

Frances was also innovative in the ways that she engaged community. She used the hello-Fuego channel (a channel meant for allies) in a dynamic way that none of our other ERGs had used it. She pushed for conversation in the channel as a way to build community and connections across groups–tactically doing this by creating light lift icebreaker prompts in channel.

One place that I’ve also seen Frances grow immensely through the process of the Incubator is in her ability to manage and support a distributed team. So much interpersonal work goes into rallying and motivating a working group of people–while also interacting with executives to advocate for your group.

All of Frances’ work was effective–as she took Fuego from an idea, to a fledgling ERG in an incubator program, to a full fledged ERG. It was a pleasure to watch that growth.

Lastly–as a person, I’m inspired by Frances drive to give back. I constantly see Frances speaking with or hosting groups–with the goal of providing access to underserved communities. I see the work you do on this front and admire it, Frances.

Frances has been an absolutely fantastic partner during my relatively brief tenure as Fuego executive sponsor.

• Partner / Teacher: she has been so helpful in getting me up to speed re Fuego’s history, mandate, goals, etc. She takes time to discuss over zoom, provides slides / explanations about any and all topics. However, it is important to note, her role as a very strong teacher was not only on display for me. I have observed she is the “go-to” person for so many Fuego team members across a wide spectrum of requests / teachable moments.
• Results Driven: while I obviously cannot comment on Frances’ technical proficiency or core job performance, in my experience with her, she is incredibly efficient and thorough. Frances was a key driver of the highly successful LatinX Heritage month this past fall. This took ideating, driving and executing on several discreet events.
• Fuego as an ERG: Finally, and perhaps most importantly, partnering with Monica (and me to an extent), Frances has been the key driver in establishing Fuego as an “incubating” and now, moving towards a formally recognized / official ERG. These accomplishments took incredible initiative, patience and true intellectual horsepower. For this, I commend Frances!!

The Fuego leads have shown dedication, leadership, and have built a sense of belonging to our Latinx community at Slack. I am so proud to work along side these individuals and feel inspired by them.

They have driven the Fuego incubator group throughout FY21 and have driven the following for our members:

1. Increase the visibility and sense of belonging of our Fuego members within Slack

Provided opportunities throughout the year to come together as group and celebrate our community. An examples: Latinx & Hispanic Heritage Month (drove events throughout the month which included cooking classes, fitness classes, cocktail making, lunch get together, etc). This group drove the biggest Latinx & Hispanic celebrations Slack has had to date with 12 different events our members/allies could join.

2. Level up the careers of our Fuego members

The leads have been able to provide opportunities to help level up members in our community.

An upcoming example: Speaking Skills Workshop. This opportunity is a day long event which will help our members learn how to speak more clearly, be a more engaged, and present in a more clear way.

3. Increase external awareness of the Fuego ERG to the wider Latinx in tech community

We were able to create our Fuego brand this year with some folks on the creative team.

We were also able to showcase some our members during Latinx & Hispanic on Slack’s Linkedin page. Our top Linkedin post was of one of our leads, Jennifer Paiste, and had 25k organic impressions (source: Linkedin Advertising Platform). All of our members posts had over 10k organic impressions (source: Linkedin Advertising Platform).

February 3, 2022

I remember back when conversations looked like “Should we apply to be an ERG? Who wants to be the lead? How often should we meet?” and you stepped up every time. Remember, when Fuego wasn’t even named Fuego?! I don’t even remember what it was anymore.

It does take a lot of work and you did a lot of behind the scenes work that needed to be done to set Fuego up for success.

You have been a crucial part of this comunidad. From the applying Fuego to be an ERG, to bringing it to life with the leads team, to structuring it on what it is today.

You played a huge role. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

Gracias por todo.

The Fuego ERG only has about 6 months after being formed but it feels like we’ve been around so much longer! This past quarter we had a very successful celebration of Latinx & Hispanic month, we put on 13 different events for our members & allies. We also worked with the social media team and swag team to coordinate 12 different Linkedln posts spotlighting our employees and over 60 different shipments of swag. With these efforts including different Slack channel events & AMA’s, in less than 6 months we were able to reach and exceed our OKR #1 of “creating a sense of belonging for Slack’s Latinx and Hispanic employees” due to the work of our core team of eight leads.

As a volunteer, I can whole heartedly say that none of it would be possible without the over the top effort & leadership of the co-leads: Frances Coronel & Monica Wilkinson. I’m so so grateful & thankful for their commitment to leading this ERG while still doing their full-time job duties. I’m so excited to continue to be a part of this group led by Frances! She deserves all the praise!

Frances’ high energy and strong leadership skills are very easy to assimilate when interacting with her. Additionally, she is very compassionate and motivated which makes it very enjoyable working with her. She always makes sure that all participants are part of the conversation and keeps things on focus when we start going on a tangent.

1. Motivation: I really admire how you represented our team through the blog post and highlighted our work not only internally but also to the outside world. It’s really important for people to understand the work we do beyond the product, both for our brand and for the reputation of our engineering organization.
2. Communication: In meetings and in Slack channels I admire how you communicate proiect updates, questions and potential blockers to others. People look up to you as someone who knows how to communicate effectively with different types of stakeholders to ensure that all of the bases are covered.
3. Execution and Craft: Projects that you have taken on such as the prospect homepage showcase your frontend technical knowledge and ability to take on complex tasks that have no precedent (such as the live demo).

I am extremely pleased to work with Frances, she is a rockstar both as an IC and Leader. I am constantly impressed by Frances’ leadership style which fosters results, collaboration and accountability. She is a leader of leaders and leads by example being very responsive, responsible and getting tasks completed effortlessly.

Frances helped bring to life a change to the Contact Sales Form that will help to reduce incorrect routing of tickets. She was able to handle this change quickly and was very thorough in her questions and understanding to make sure the change was implemented properly. Thank you Frances!

Frances, thank you for working with me and Sarah last week and being open to our suggestions around the workflow builder page.

I really appreciated you asking clarifying questions and being open with letting us know what was/was not possible, but also that you tried to take our suggestions into account and help provide international users with a better, more empowering localized experience.

It’s been great to work with Frances on the Techqueria.org site. It has become a much more collaborative open-source project with her leadership. I appreciate how she has made the project accessible to both the maintainers and new contributors. She is a great team member and I enjoy maintaining the project with her.

As a student at Make School, Frances has been an invaluable mentor for me on my journey to becoming a software engineer. She’s extremely knowledgeable about the tech industry and passionate about sharing that knowledge with others.