Lorraine Vargas Townsend - Successfully Standing Up for Other People!

Lorraine Vargas Townsend shares her unique insight on disrupting the corporate world, to make it better regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientation. She talks about how her life as queer, latinx, and a two time cancer survivor fueled her fearless approach to improving Human Resources to create greater inclusion, stronger allies, and an exceptional workplace for everyone.

Lorraine credits her mom, a Colombian immigrant as her main source of inspiration for constantly standing up for others.

Her life’s mission is to develop people-first HR policies to go beyond tokenism and build an inclusive, anti-racist workplace.


Lorraine serves as the Chief People Guru at A Cloud Guru and has more than 20 years of experience as an HR executive. She also serves on the board of directors at Babson College's Executive Development Center and previously led HR at Mendix and athenahealth.