By Emma Dugas, Vitals contributor

Employers are increasingly encouraging their workforce to bring their genuine selves to their jobs. They know that when people show up with authenticity it can transform team dynamics. It can also create deeper connections, spark innovation and foster an environment where everyone is truly valued and celebrated for their unique identities.

Meet three leaders from Sutter Health who have taken this encouragement to heart and embraced their Latino/Hispanic heritage in new ways at work and in life.

Katrina Ascencio-Holmes

Katrina (Kat) Ascencio-Holmes was pursuing her master’s degree in health administration when she first established her LinkedIn profile. At the time she was known professionally as Kat Holmes, but she took this opportunity to elaborate. Her full first name, Katrina, made a debut along with her surname Ascencio, which she hyphenated with Holmes.

“It’s easy to have your head down and be busy doing the work, but in my master’s program I had the chance to step back and was encouraged to consider what message I wanted to send about myself in business,” remembers Ascencio-Holmes. “I chose to add back my maiden name because it was the answer to the question: who am I?”

Since making the change four years ago, which she carried over to her email signature, Ascencio-Holmes has been shocked at the number of people who have noticed. “I didn’t realize the impact it would make, so many people have come up to me and said they didn’t know Sutter had a Latina in such a senior leadership position.” Ascencio-Holmes is interim chief nurse officer for Sutter Health.

Awareness is a goal for Ascencio-Holmes, because she wants more people to see that anything is possible in their career. She learned that lesson early in her own professional journey, while volunteering at annual health fairs organized by Su Salud. “A thousand people, who had no insurance, and no regular form of healthcare, would come for blood pressure checks, immunizations, dental exams, all provided by volunteers,” Ascencio-Holmes remembers. Su Salud is Spanish for “your health.”

Born and raised in Stockton, and having lived in the Lodi area before moving to El Dorado Hills, Ascencio-Holmes says that knowing the difference she and other volunteers could make, and seeing a small effort grow, gave her the confidence to aim higher, for herself and her community.

Founded in 1987, by Argentina native and longtime Stockton dentist Dr. Guillermo C. Vicuña, Su Salud started as a grassroots effort which grew to become the largest and most widely regarded one-day health fair in the nation. Outgrowing local church parking lots, the fair quickly moved to the San Joaquin County fairgrounds where it drew more than 20,000 patients per event. Dr. Vicuña is also known for creating the traveling “Tour of Life” health education program and teaching other counties how to organize their own health fairs. Su Salud found a year-round home in San Joaquin General Hospital and inspired a proliferation of health events and clinics that serve under-resourced communities today.

Dr. Monica Contreras Devoy

Dr. Monica Contreras Devoy is an OB/GYN and mom to two girls. The needs, rights and power of women are topics she thinks about, a lot. It may come as no surprise then that Dr. Devoy incorporated her maiden name in her professional profile – choosing to have it used as a middle name – about two years ago.

“It was a deliberate and meaningful decision to ensure Contreras was in my online physician bio, e-mail and EPIC signatures and on my white coat,” she says. “It reflects my Latina heritage and may help Spanish-speaking patients feel more comfortable, knowing I can potentially relate to their experiences and communicate with them in their language.” For this reason, Dr. Devoy also made sure that her online profile states that she is bilingual.

Dr. Devoy has another reason she has chosen to include her surname in clinical contexts, saying “I believe that increasing the visibility of Latinas in medicine is crucial.” As the daughter of immigrants and the first in her family graduate high school, college, and become a physician, she knows what her success can signal to others. “It’s important for underrepresented groups to feel seen and for future generations to recognize that they too belong in spaces like this,” she says.

Carla Carrillo Otterson

Carla Carrillo Otterson can trace her roots back to Mexico in three generations on her father’s side and two on her mother’s side. Descended from some of the earliest pioneers of Tucson, Arizona, Otterson takes pride in her maiden name. It’s that pride that led her, four years ago, to restore the Carrillo surname to her LinkedIn profile and email signature where it appears above her title of deputy general counsel for Sutter Health.

“I chose to consciously bring back my surname because I didn’t want to lose that part of my identity,” Carrillo Otterson recently remarked. “It’s important to have Hispanic leaders and role models be visible to counter the tendency that I grew up with to be quiet and assimilate in business”

In her volunteer work with the Hispanic National Bar Association and the University of San Francisco law school, Carrillo Otterson has been paired with mentees who share her cultural background and her love of the law. She says that mentoring the next generation of Hispanic lawyers and volunteering at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market helps her feel connected to her history and carries on a family tradition to give back to the community.