Karla Monterroso

Special Advisor & CEO Emeritus

Karla Monterroso is committed to closing the opportunity gap for Black and Latinx people in the United States. She believes Code2040 sits in the perfect intersection of a skills- and network-building opportunity for Black and Latinx tech talent and a systems-change opportunity for a critical segment of the country's economy.

Karla has focused much of her career growing the people and program functions of rapidly scaling social enterprises driving youth advocacy and leadership. Since joining Code2040 in 2014, she has grown the number of students served from 25 to 4,000, ushered in several new successful programs, and stewarded critical organizational development practices and policies around values and racial equity. Her success and insights on racial justice and equity have landed her in publications such as Fast Company, NPR, Bloomberg, and more.

Prior to Code2040, she served as the National Director of Advocate Engagement at Health Leads, where she developed the recruitment systems, performance management tools, and national training standards, structures, and curricula that allowed them to scale. As their Director of Talent, she tripled the staff size to 70+ team members within two years and grew the operations that impacted employee recruitment, performance, and engagement.

Karla’s passion for equity and social justice comes from her upbringing in a low-income community with Latinx parents who instilled in her a love for her culture and dedicated their lives to making sure she was the first in her family to go to and graduate college. She enjoys the art of group and team facilitation, has a natural aptitude for organizational development and change management, and believes fervently in the cultivation of organization culture. Karla is an alumnus of the University of Southern California.