If nearly half of the women in your industry want to leave, something is broken. And if you ask April Hicke, the solution isn’t to try to fix the people who want to leave — it’s that the system is broken.
As co-founder and CEO of Toast, Hicke is helping companies do exactly that. Her team connects women in tech with high-quality roles across North America, while working directly with hiring leaders to challenge bias, rethink job requirements and build more inclusive workplaces.
In a conversation at Inventures 2025, hosted by Alberta Innovates, Hicke shared why real innovation depends on inclusion, what companies get wrong about allyship, and how Canada’s tech ecosystem can move from talking about equity to actually delivering it.
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Inclusion and innovation are linked, even if not everyone says so
Despite ongoing headlines declaring the end of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, Hicke says demand for Toast’s services has not dropped.
If anything, it has grown.
“My inbox says…the headlines that we’re seeing are not painting the full picture,” says Hicke. “We still have a lot of companies doubling down.”
She describes a conversation with the CEO of a multinational firm who put it bluntly: even if some leaders are less vocal about their inclusion strategies, they are still pursuing them.
Also, the data is clear. Diverse teams perform better. Innovation depends on that diversity — not just of race or gender, but of experience and perspective.
This continued demand has put Toast in a unique position. Its platform is not just a database. It is a human-powered matching service, with a team of recruiters who actively push back against job descriptions that reinforce outdated norms.
“We have no problem challenging them,” she explains. “There’s a lot of bias in that requirement. Can we talk about why…you need it to be someone from this specific company? What are the skills you’re actually looking for?”
In a moment where artificial intelligence is shaping more hiring decisions, Hicke believes this kind of questioning is more urgent than ever. Algorithms are only as fair as the data they are trained on, and most datasets reflect the industry’s long-standing blind spots.
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Rebuilding the system, not just navigating it
For Hicke, creating change means questioning the very structures that shape career paths in tech. She points to stark statistics: One in three women are considering leave the sector before reaching senior roles. Nearly half are considering leaving altogether.
“The systems that we operate in right now are not necessarily built for women. And the stats show that,” she says.
Toast’s answer is to create a different model, and they do it in a few different ways.
Toast is a membership-based collective working to get more women hired, supported, and promoted in the tech industry. They connect women with trusted companies through a curated job board, coaching, and run programs like the Champions sponsorship model to address the gap between talent and leadership.
With the Champions program, every mentor is a man — a deliberate reversal of the usual mentorship model, where the burden often falls on women.
“If 90 percent of tech leadership is men, then we should have men be the people that are sponsoring the women,” she says.
That shift in responsibility is not just theoretical. It plays out in real hiring conversations too.
Hicke recalls a story about a client who rejected a candidate because she didn’t know who Peter Thiel was. Instead of accepting that decision, Hicke spoke directly with the hiring manager to unpack the assumptions behind it.
“How could that be an indicator of how someone would succeed in the role?” she recalls asking. “I think speaking up and challenging that status quo is what’s enabled us to challenge that system itself.”
That same principle applies to inclusion. Toast does not just coach women to succeed in the current system. They ask more of the people who hold the power to change it.
“Allyship should cost you something. It costs time, money or social capital,” says Hicke. “It’s one thing to give your time and mentor someone. But it’s another thing to open doors, make introductions.”
She adds, “the best thing a man can do is open a door for someone else.”
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Retention starts with community and accountability
When asked how to fix the retention gap, Hicke is pragmatic. The experience of being the only woman on a team (“the lonely only”) is part of the problem.
Isolation wears people down. That is why Toast’s community-building efforts are as important as its placement services.
“We need to hire more women so that women end up less often as that ‘lonely only’ on the team,” she says. “We need to surround women with community.”
It is also about real, material support. The company’s Toast Summit events, expanding to Toronto this month, offer not just networking and skills sessions but on-site childcare, sensory-friendly spaces, and even pre-event socials to reduce anxiety and increase connection.
“Last year, I went to 16 conferences, and I really loved two of them,” she says. “Often I’m the minority, or the panels are not built for women, or I’m running around because I need to get home to take care of my kids.”
By intentionally designing for women’s needs, Toast is modelling what inclusive innovation can look like in practice, not just in theory.
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Where Toast goes next
Hicke says the company is focused on refining what it already does well, not scaling for the sake of growth. It’s aiming for what they do best with “laser precision.”
The goal is to place women in roles where they can thrive, and support them so they stay. That means pushing for representation across technical, adjacent and leadership roles and showing up in every part of Canada’s growing innovation ecosystem.
“We want to help companies hire great women. We want to help get women jobs on teams that they really like,” she says.
“Canada has a thriving ecosystem…We want to be everywhere, and we want to be part of it.”
Watch the interview:
Want to meet April or learn more about Toast? Join Digital Journal at the Toast Summit, taking place June 20 in Toronto.
- Get tickets and event details here.
- Digital Journal is the official media partner of the 2025 Toast Summit.
This article was created with the assistance of AI. Learn more about our AI ethics policy here.
