Diane Gonzalez Gives Others a Voice at Amazon

Diane Gonzalez shares how facing discrimination as a child influences her leadership style and efforts to increase Latino representation at Amazon

Diane Gonzalez, VP Technology, Finance Automation, Amazon

BY NOAH JOHNSON, HISPANIC EXECUTIVE

As the vice president of technology for Amazon’s finance automation team, Diane Gonzalez knows what it takes to build strong teams, turn around low-performing ones, and motivate her personnel to reach unprecedented levels of excellence. Her expertise comes from over thirty years of software management experience, spanning relational database systems, platform as a service, and cloud technologies, underscored by her unwavering passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

She traces her intuitive understanding of how great teams operate to her upbringing in Ohio in the 1960s, when she and her family wrestled with discrimination. She remembers how she and her two brothers were ridiculed and beaten up daily for being people of color. As Gonzalez advanced in her career, those harsh memories influenced her leadership style.

“In almost every organization I’ve led, the teams I take on don’t feel like they have a voice,” she says. “I know what that’s like. But when people know you have their backs—that you’ll go to bat for them—it frees them up to take risks. They invariably rise to the occasion.”

When Gonzalez joined Amazon in 2015 as vice president of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Commerce Platform, she inherited a team struggling with morale and meeting commitments, she says. She set a bold vision, which inspired others and reduced attrition in the first year. Over six years, she grew the organization from 150 people to nearly 2,000 people.

“[My father] warned us that a lot of people would tell us we didn’t belong, which we experienced every day. But after forty years in a white-male-dominated business, I’m still standing.”

Diane Gonzalez

In 2022, she joined Amazon’s finance automation team, which oversees the automation of processes for accounts payable and receivable, payroll, and facilities, among others. She takes pride in contributing to the company’s long-term strategy while advocating for better representation across the company. It’s a role that is highly valued by senior leadership, including CFO Brian Olsavsky. “Because Diane cares so deeply—about our work, our customers, our company, and our teams —her impact extends well beyond her technical expertise or role as a leader,” Olsavsky says. “Her ability to inspire, drive, and elevate others creates a ripple effect wherever she goes.”

One area Gonzalez is leading is the team’s work on generative AI. “We’re aggressively incorporating gen AI into our daily work and the products we’re building for our customers,” Gonzalez says. “There’s some anxiety about machines taking over what we do. Certainly that’s true for the more mundane processes, but it’s more about empowering teams, and freeing them up to deliver more impactful value to our customers. We’re training people on these technologies so they can continue to learn, grow, and stay relevant.”

Photo by Genna Martin

Her hardworking migrant parents valued education and instilled a strong sense of self-assurance in their three children. “My father believed if you work hard and stay focused, you can achieve what you want,” she says. “He also warned us that a lot of people would tell us we didn’t belong, which we experienced every day. But after forty years in a white-male-dominated business, I’m still standing.”

Gonzalez started her decades-long career as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard (HP) after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in applied mathematics. Her first role at HP set the tone for how she’d approach problems throughout her career.

“At HP, we were taught to look at problems from a systems perspective,” she says. “It’s easy to have a myopic view when you’re working on a small piece of a bigger problem. We were trained to understand how we fit into the bigger picture, and to consider other components when building software. That has really helped me, because when I look at a problem, I don’t look at it through a narrow lens.”

Gonzalez says that continual learning and a willingness to experiment with emerging technologies like generative AI will create more opportunities for people of color wanting to get into technology fields. As someone who spent much of her career as the only Latina in the room, adding opportunities in tech for underrepresented groups means a lot to her.

Gonzalez recognizes there is more awareness around the lack of diversity in STEM, but she believes radical shifts are needed for real improvement.

She’s doing her part to advocate for systemic change and pioneering new initiatives as an executive sponsor of Latinos@Amazon. For instance, she’s working with universities to build an internship program geared toward increasing Latina representation and driving internal recruiting programs to bring more LatinX talent into Amazon.

Photo by Genna Martin

This focus, combined with her big-picture view is a key point she emphasizes to her many mentees. But above all, she imparts three pieces of advice to all aspiring leaders. “First, you need to believe in yourself because if you don’t, no one else will. It’s got to start with you,” Gonzalez says. “Second, you’ve got to tell people what you want. Third, never stop learning. Life is a long-term exercise in learning, and things can change very quickly, especially in technology, as we’ve seen with gen AI. You need to be prepared for change.”

Hispanicexecutive.com