Lyft, a transportation network company, announced that Monica Poindexter, previously Facebook’s global head of diversity business partners, has joined the company to lead its inclusion and diversity activities. According to the IPO-bound company, Poindexter will have a holistic mission.
“I’m in a unique role and have an opportunity to help the organization look at diversity more holistically and look at it through the lens of talent, workforce and marketplace,” Poindexter told TechCrunch. She added that she is trying to understand the company’s internal processes so she can “identify areas where we can intentionally embed inclusion and diversity into our processes.”
Poindexter who will report to Nilka Thomas, the VP of Talent and Inclusion said that she took the job at Lyft because of the sense of commitment from Logan Green and John Zimmer, Lyft’s co-founders.
According to Poindexter, the commitment from Lyft’s leadership team was a key deciding factor for her because the work would be difficult without the “top-down support from leadership.”
Lyft hired Tariq Meyers as its first-ever head of inclusion and diversity in September 2016. Within one year, Lyft’s first diversity report showed numbers comparable to the likes of Facebook, Google and Uber. Meyers resigned in April 2018 to be another company’s global head of belonging, inclusion and employee experience.
Last September, Lyft second annual diversity report showed little change from the previous year. The report showed Lyft’s workforce was 40 percent female while 52 percent were white.
