Diversity outreach director appointed to advance City's diversity agenda

Mayor Martin J. Walsh today announced the appointment of Tania Del Rio as Diversity Outreach Director, a new role created to ensure the City's strategic plan for diversity is implemented throughout the City of Boston. Tania joins Chief Diversity Officer Danielson Tavares in advancing the Mayor's goals of increasing diversity across Boston's workforce and ensuring that City government is reflective of its people.

"Tania is a skilled professional who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in working with both public and private sector entities to this role, and I am excited to have her on board as the Diversity Outreach Director," said Mayor Walsh. "I'm proud of the steps we've taken and the progress we've made to make sure the City's workforce is reflective of the City itself, and I am confident that Tania's expertise will help bring us one step closer towards achieving our diversity goals."

As the Diversity Outreach Director, Tania will be responsible for outreach and recruitment efforts to the community at large to promote diversity in Boston; developing and maintaining relationships with businesses, nonprofits, educational and religious organizations; compiling, tracking and reviewing diversity statistics; and serving as a point of contact for both internal and external audiences in regards to their hiring and recruitment efforts. 

"I'm tremendously excited to join the City of Boston and the Mayor's effort to make opportunities equally available for people from all demographic groups, and to ensure that our workforce can reflect Boston's richly diverse population," said Del Rio. "It is a mission that I deeply care about and hope to make much progress towards in this new role."

Prior to joining the City's Office of Diversity, Tania Del Rio served as the Head of the Protection and Community Affairs Departments at the Consulate of Mexico in Boston. In that role, she focused on ensuring the rights of immigrants in New England were protected, and collaborated with community leaders to amplify their advocacy efforts. This work put her in contact with people from a broad range of experiences, including prison populations, children and youth, faith-based and cultural organizations, as well as private sector partners.

She also worked with the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs on using data to produce a diagnostic and recommendations for increasing gender diversity in the Foreign Service.

Tania holds a Master in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor of Arts from New York University. She currently resides in East Boston with her family.

The City of Boston's Office of Diversity is committed to ensuring a diverse government workforce in order to more effectively provide services to every neighborhood, resident and business owner.

Today's announcement builds on Mayor Walsh's commitment to increasing diversity in our City's workforce. Mayor Walsh first announced the Office of Diversity in December 2014 to lead the Mayor's diversity agenda, including the ongoing development and delivery of the City's diversity goals and objectives in the areas of hiring, leadership and career development, diversity training, strategic planning, recruitment and retention.

Since that time, under the leadership of Mayor Walsh, the City has:

• published diversity data online for the first time
• brought on 44% people of color out of full-time new hires
• appointed the most diverse command staff in the Boston Police Department in history
• reinstated the BPD Cadet Program to hire a more diverse pool of candidates, and
• worked to ensure that minority and women-owned small businesses are afforded fair and equitable opportunities when competing for city contracts.

Visit the Mayor's Office of Diversity for more information.