Event Details

GCHRA Welcomes Amanda Vallejo

Program Information: To provide Human Resource professionals with current information, workplace trends and guidance regarding working in a multigenerational work environment, and how to improve communication between the generations that will result in improved production and employee engagement.

• In 1998 Amanda accepted an appointment to Director of the Office of Civil Rights for the State of Oregon. There she was responsible for the day to day State wide administration of diversity programs, affirmative action, ADA, labor compliance, and disadvantaged business programs, external on the Job training programs, Title VI environmental justice, and managed the tribal employment rights ordinance.
• While living in Oregon, Amanda served as chair of the Salem Human Rights Commission where she was successful in championing the city’s first hate-free city ordinance and established the city’s first citizen police review board.  She was also appointed by the Governor to serve on the Hispanic Affairs Commission where she wrote the State’s first Limited English policy to address how State services would be delivered to citizens who were of limited English.
• After Oregon, Amanda accepted a position as Director of Civil and Equal Rights with the State of Virginia, where she became a certified EEO mediator through the Affirmative Action Association with oversight of all EEO agreements. She restructured the Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE) certification process, developed and implemented a “Mentor Protégé Program” for DBE firms, and established a “Transportation DBE Advisory Committee” (TDAC) providing a forum for public participation.  Further, she developed a Welfare-to-Work program utilizing $400,000 in federal grants and developed the State’s first Limited English program.
• In 2006 she accepted a position with Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding-Gulf Coast Operations, now known as Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), as the Diversity and Inclusion/EEO Manager.
• During her tenure at Ingalls Amanda designed, developed and implemented a robust Diversity and EEO program for over 16,000 employees covering three states.  Some of her other major accomplishments since beginning her career with HII include the following: leading a diverse team of shipbuilders to develop a set of initiatives that address the specific needs of the  limited English-proficiency workforce by providing tools and programs designed to improve safety, productivity, recruitment and retention, employee communication and employee morale.  The Ingalls Limited English Proficiency Program was recognized as a corporate best practice by the Council of the Americas, a think tank based in New York, and was included in a white paper presented to Congress in 2008 and again in 2010.
• She developed and implemented a diversity strategy aligned with business goals that includes a diversity awareness campaign, diversity and anti-harassment training, an annual diversity calendar of events, increasing employee nominations at diversity-focused national conferences, regularly publishes diversity articles in the company’s newsletter, manages EEO compliance efforts,  designed and fully deployed the Ingalls Limited English Proficiency Program,  stood-up and provides ongoing guidance to five employee resources groups,  leads OFCCP audits, redesigned the internal EEO investigation process, and effectively coordinated cross functional teams to address and or plan diversity efforts.