Jennifer Velez

Head of DEI, Comms + Culture Forever 21

Jennifer Velez (she/her) currently leads DEI, Comms and Culture at Forever 21 and loves to support organizational growth and development through an organization's most valuable resource- people. She is committed to expanding equity and access by directly supporting historically marginalized communities. Jennifer has experience building DEI strategies, assessing culture, standing up Employee Resource Groups (ERG) and creating wellness programs to increase employee engagement, psychological safety, and satisfaction. A previous leader often described her as "water in the desert" for her wealth of knowledge and agile problem-solving skills. She loves coaching others and helping them to see their value and believes leaders have the responsibility of helping people grow. Jennifer has experience planning, building and facilitating workshops for small and large groups of various stakeholders, in addition to policy analysis, assessment and writing. Jennifer is committed to always striving to grow organizations to be better tomorrow than they were yesterday. Additionally, she has lived, worked and conducted research in six countries! Jennifer currently resides in Los Angeles and is a single mom to a child with multiple disabilities.