April is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Toast. Toast is a membership-based women’s collective founded to flip the hiring dynamic in favour of women in tech.
Her and I hopped on a call to talk about her experience and what's important to her.
Who is April?
I like to call myself a recovering corporate ladder climber. I had such an interest in fighting the man, I'm such a defiant human being by nature that I thought I'd work for QP or a union or something. Then I ended up spending years working for the man, spending time in corporate, at big fours before becoming an entrepreneur, which I think is definitely the right fit for me.
Before that, I'm a happy mom of two boys that I'm raising to be little feminists.
I think something interesting about your journey into Toast, it feels like it’s not only defiant of you to leave corporate and start a business, but the business that you did start is looking to change corporate as well.
Trying to, for sure. We like to challenge the status quo. I often found myself in roles where the spaces that we operated in weren't always built for moms, not always built for women, not always built for women of color. We strive to create something different. Social Corporate Innovation piqued my interest - I received a Graduate Certificate last year – and questions of how to hold organizations accountable to social change or for the betterment of people were questions I’ve always been interested in.
I've had my own experiences as a mother working where I had my values and priorities challenged by a leader. I was coming back from mat leave into a promotion, and I really wanted to show up as a high performer. Trying to balance the two, being a mother takes priority, but I was told I needed to get my priorities straight.
Looking back, my priorities were straight, and it brought up questions of structures that women try to fit into. Not every place is a safe place for women to work.
My Co-Founder and I had a lot of conversations around these struggles before,trying to figure out how we could try and solve this, how to create a place that's safe for women. It takes a lot of intentionality to build a space that's inclusive and thoughtful for all people.
We had a very similar experience as women in the workforce, and she really struggled to hire women on her team. Together, it was the catalyst for us.
Why do you think the Toast community holds so strong?
I would say my Co-Founder and I are both well known for speaking up; we often try to give voice to what should be said. Not everyone feels the safety or comfort to say some of things that we say.
We also know that women approach the job hunt differently. We have two sides to the business, B2B and B2C. Primarily, our revenue driver is all B2B; companies hire us to place women. Your candidate pool should reflect the community that you serve; if you put a job posting up for a software engineer and you get 300 applicants, if only 4 of them are women, obviously that's not a pool representative of your community. We're here to help to that.
With that, women often feel like they're lonely. We’re between 11 and 22% of the industry, depending on what province you're in. We need community to not feel as alone. My Co-Founder and I met when we sat on a Board of Directors together, we were both looking for a community outside of where we worked. We wanted to have that B2C aspect where women would have a community, to have access to HR, lawyers, upskilling opportunities, and meetups to have open conversations that you don't feel comfortable having at work. We firsthand experienced what a huge lift it is to have a community, and try to make it easier for others.
How do you keep the difference between April of Toast, and April at home?
I pride myself on showing up authentically, and I’m very grateful that I feel safe to show up as my true self now. I spent a lot of years trying to fit myself into a box, especially when I was in corporate. In our first couple of months of growing Toast, my co-founder had to give me a shake and tell me ‘You've made it, you are here.’ I was still wearing this mask of 'Corporate April'.
For a long time, I hid parts of myself because I thought maybe I wouldn't get a promotion. I grew up in an unstable home, I didn’t finish high school, and I hid that because I felt like I needed to make sure I fit into the boxes.
It's an interesting thing to be as visible as I am. I have people come to me and say ‘I read about you in the paper, it's so nice to meet you.’, I find I get anxious because of the visibility, just thinking about people seeing me or knowing me. I think boundaries are the most important thing. I don't allow anyone on my Instagram. I don't want people seeing my kids. I have the front-facing part of me, but I think it's also really important for me to protect my peace, have some privacy and boundaries. Our personal brand is to tell our story, that’s what’s exciting. But finding pockets of quiet time and drawing that hard boundary is crucial.
Very quickly, like most entrepreneurs, I hit a big burnout wall in my first year. Fortunately, I have the most incredible mentor, and she encourages me to go out to the forest, take my shoes off, and just have some quiet time. It's important to step back sometimes.
What are you proud of?
I'm really proud of the impact that we've had. When I think of our greatest moments, obviously, Forbes is super cool, the Summit super cool, the revenue and growth that we've had is amazing. But I think it's in the little conversations we have. We had a woman come up to us one time who said she heard me speak and because of me, she felt the confidence she needed to go off and start her own business. We have women that come up to us in our community and say ‘Thank you, because of Toast and all the women that I've met here, I fought for a higher salary for myself.’ I think those individual impacts that we're having on women's day-to-day life are the biggest things that stick with me.
I pride myself on being a bit of a change-maker, and directly seeing the impact that we're having on clients, companies, and people are really important one for me.
What comes next?
Marissa and I are off to my cabin to have a full, like, A Beautiful Mind session where we put post-its all over the walls and strategize on what the next year is going to look like.
I think more of the same. We have so many clients and so many candidates now we just want to ensure that we're really providing value in everything that we do.
I think her and I, because we are such opposites, it complements each other perfectly. With her at the helm as CEO and me as Chief Growth Officer, it’s like we’re rocket fuel together.
Thank you, April.
Photo by https://www.genevieverenee.com/about-1/