BY DOMINIQUE LAMBERTON
“My advice would be to revise your thoughts and mindset.” ANCA DAN
TOAST OF THE TECH WORLD How a Calgary-based talent organization is helping
P H OTO G R A P H Y BY J A R E D SYC H
Canadian women find their dream roles in tech — and solution, the SingleParentLife.App, which she incorporated in 2021 to provide supportive and safe communities for people like her. SingleParentLife.App uses your location, interests and goals to connect you with other single parents in the area with similar interests and children within the same age bracket. Like many dating apps, users can connect anonymously with one another by swiping to the right, or pass on a connection by swiping left. When two users connect, they can message each other within the app. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes investors to fund a startup. So far, Dan has bootstrapped her way into making SingleParentLife.App a reality, pitching at events like Innovation Rodeo (where she took the third-place prize), and she’s currently looking for a CTO and developer to get the app live. It’s a major shift from her other work as a consultant for corporate human resource departments, but Dan draws from her own coaching techniques and training to switch her mindset into that of a tech company founder. And she advises other would-be founders to do the same. “My advice would be to revise your thoughts and mindset,” she says. “Transitioning from one profession to another is always challenging, because you [might have] imposter syndrome. Getting rid of those limiting thoughts is really important and paramount in your success.”
avenuecalgary.com
building a tight-knit community along the way. hen April Hicke and Marissa involves removing bias from the selection process: Toast McNeelands met as board creates candidate profiles that include highlights around members for Young Women work experience, education and accomplishments, but in Business, they quickly leave out school and company names, as well as the connected over similar name, photo and other identifying information of the issues they’d seen and candidate. “I truly believe that if we’re pushing diversity, experienced in their maleequity and inclusion into organizations, it has to start in dominated tech workplaces hiring,” says Hicke. “We need to remove some of those — things like a lack of women and diverse talent, salbiases to get the right people in the door that are hired ary disparity, getting left out of technical discussions based on their qualifications.” and perennially being the ones asked to plan the team Before signing on partners, Toast vets companies parties. These persistent problems were part of the to ensure their values align; currently, that’s completed reason the two had each sought camaraderie outside by Hicke, but eventually they’d like to utilize artificial of their full-time roles, including intelligence as part of the 360 review their board positions. process (McNeelands is currently workAs Hicke and McNeelands grew ing towards a Master’s of Management the women-centred community in Artificial Intelligence at Queen’s Unithey lacked in their workplaces, versity; Hicke is completing her MBA something larger began to take via Royal Roads University). “There are shape. “People tended to lean on a lot of organizations that have splashy Marissa and I and ask questions; we DE&I pages, but they’re not great places were coaching women on the side, to work,” says Hicke. She and McNeetalking openly about salary and lands envision a future where the gold negotiating their worth,” says Hicke. standard for a top-tier workplace is a “We kind of made a name for ourpartnership with Toast: “Women could MARISSA MCNEELANDS selves as mentors in that way. And look and say, ‘Oh, they partner with we were like, ‘Wait a minute, can we Toast? Then 100 per cent,’” Hicke says. just do this for a living?’” In addition to placing women in custom-fit roles at So, they did: In 2022, Hicke and McNeelands joined trusted tech organizations, Toast offers a paid monthly forces to create Toast, a talent organization and membership, which provides admission to regular virtual membership-based collective aimed at increasing gender and in-person events and workshops, as well as access diversity in tech. By partnering with companies that to a dedicated community in Slack, an online messaging want to build more diverse and equitable workplaces, platform where members can connect on different topespecially in the lead up to federally mandated ESG ics, share job hunt resources, chat with Toast’s in-house reporting by 2024, Toast is able to place the women in legal and HR expert, plan meetups, share experiences its network into high-quality roles, both full-time and and vent. There are currently more than 100 members contract, with the compensation to match. “Our mission across the country, and over 3,000 people in Toast’s is to help women get the work they want, for the pay candidate roster. they deserve, with a community that supports them,” “We had someone tell us recently that she’s gotten says McNeelands. Toast has partnered with more than 27 more value out of being [a member of] Toast for two organizations since its launch, including Helcim, AltaML days than she did being in another organization for aland PurposeMed, with more signing on all the time. most two years,” says Hicke. “It’s been so rewarding, and Part of Toast’s white-glove job placement formula validating [to tackle] a problem that needs to be solved.”
“our mission is to help women get the work they want, for the pay they deserve.”
49
