2019 Metal Toad Diversity Report

Dear Community,

Attached you will find our survey results from the annual 2019 TechtownPDX survey on diversity in our community and our company.

Back in 2015, Metal Toad was part of an inaugural group of tech companies to take a pledge to take action around the lack of diversity in the tech field.  For me, this is about creating a bigger table to allow more people, especially from our local community to participate.  The pledge itself has actions:

1. Partner with groups in Portland that can assist with hiring and career advancement for underrepresented communities;
2. Create and implement strategies to increase hiring of women and people of color, from intern programs to full-time positions at all levels within our organizations;
3. Educate staff on unconscious workplace biases and implement specific actions designed to alleviate them;
4. Provide internal development and progression programs, and ensure underrepresented employees can access these programs; and
5. Share our collective data on the demographic representation within our offices in the Portland metro area of gender and race.

Going back into our archives of annual reports, I found both our reported diversity stats from 2015 - as well as some predictions.  Here's where we were, where we thought we would be and where we are today:

Some analysis here: we have actually exceeded our predicted benchmark for ethnic diversity, but we have flatlined along with a number of other companies in the 30-something percentages in terms of female representation.  Nationally, women make up 47% of the total workforce, but in addition to our company data, we've also anecdotally seen only about 40% of Metal Toad interns are female or non-gender conforming.

One final reflection worth calling out is the composition of our Advisory Board, which I believe should be representative of skill sets and viewpoints not fully represented by the leadership of our company.  Here is the current board composition using the same criteria used in the tech town report:

Looking into the future, our targets are not, nor have been arbitrary.  Our goal has always been to be representative of our surrounding community and since we are now part of an additional community (Los Angeles) our goals should be reframed.