My next steps in equity & inclusion
Last week I was thrilled when Pinterest met — and exceeded — all three public hiring goals with respect to diversity, and increased employees from underrepresented backgrounds (3% to 10%) and women engineers (19% to 25%) in the process. These outcomes show how much this work — while challenging, imperfect, and highly cross-functional — is truly full of purpose.
I’ve been reflecting on what got me started on this career path. When I was 12 years old, I traveled from my middle school in the Bronx to take an exam for competitive NYC high schools, and the following year found myself traveling to lower Manhattan as a high school freshman. While gaining admission was a proud accomplishment I’d worked hard for, it was a big change to leave my middle school where 5 in 6 kids were Latinx and Black for an environment where less than 5% of my peers shared these backgrounds. It left me confused. What was it that prevented more kids from my community from having the same opportunity?
In college and even abroad in graduate school, I couldn’t stop wondering about this question. I became fascinated by how our social identities impact our values, social relationships — and business outcomes. I returned to the States to join Catalyst, a leading non-profit focused on advancement of intersectional women in corporate leadership. Under the mentorship of inspiring women leaders, I led management consulting projects based from Wall Street and Zürich for the next decade. I worked with executives at global multinationals with over 100K employees, CEOs of biomedical firms in Boston, investment bankers in Toronto, insurance companies in London, and dozens of others to dissect pain points and build inclusion strategies.
One day I got an email from Pinterest. Wishing to see more progress on diversity, co-founders Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp decided to hold the company accountable to public goals to increase diversity. They created a new position to lead diversity and inclusion efforts, and in 2016 I headed to a new industry and city to take on the role.
The Pinterest journey has been exhilarating, a steep learning curve punctuated by hard-won gains as well as humbling setbacks. In 2016, the team launched an Apprenticeship program and made diverse slates mandatory for senior positions. That same year we added increased focus on making our culture more inclusive. This included metrics on belonging, research on inclusive managers, expansion of our employee groups, and investing heavily in ensuring benefits allowed employees to invest in themselves and their families. By 2017, I’m extremely proud that inclusion efforts extended into the platform itself; a cross-departmental team built a feature to surface beauty results across skin tones. The impact of more diverse perspectives is reflected in policy decisions, such as halting promotion of weddings on former slave plantations. This corpus of work was only possible because of the unwavering commitment of Ben, Evan, and the dedicated team they’ve built. I am confident this team will continue to deliver on inclusion and diversity commitments for years to come.
The purpose of inclusion and diversity work is bigger than any one initiative, company, or industry — it is about unlocking generational barriers to access and opportunity. As for my next steps, I am thrilled to announce that I will be joining GV (formerly Google Ventures) next week as their first Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Partner. In this role, I will create inclusive strategies for GV and its portfolio companies, as well as help the firm expand the diversity of the team and the entrepreneurs it funds. As I pass the baton at Pinterest, I look forward to collaborating both internally and externally as I pour energy into this exciting new challenge.
-Candice
