We exist to advance
women in tech
Toast is Canada's leading tech recruitment firm and community for women in tech. We place exceptional talent, build community at scale, and create the products and programs that move the needle on gender equity in the industry.
The gender pay gap tripled in Canadian tech over the last five years
Men in tech earn an average of $24,000 more than women. Fewer than 25% of tech leadership roles are held by women. And closing that gap could add billions to the sector's output. We started Toast because the status quo was unacceptable, and because we knew that with the right community, the right recruitment model, and the right products, we could actually change it.
To connect, champion, and advance women in tech through intentional hiring, community, and products that close opportunity gaps and open doors.
Three things that set us apart
1
We specialize in tech recruitment that works for everyone. We help companies build more diverse technical teams, and we help women in tech land roles that actually fit.
Blind hiring eliminates bias from the process. AI-driven job matching connects the right candidate to the right role. The result: better hires, better outcomes, on both sides.
2
Women are often the "lonely only" on their tech teams. The Toast community changes that. Members get access to our Slack community, local women in tech events, workshops, career coaching, and a network built around what it actually takes to advance in this industry.
In 2025, 1 in 5 Toast members stepped into a leadership role.
3
We built a platform. The Toast Portal gives members access to Rollie our AI career agent, career coaching on demand, workshop recordings, and tools built for every stage of a tech career.
We're also building technology to transform how companies hire women in tech, making the process faster, smarter, and more equitable. Watch this space.
The numbers tell the story
Toast is driving real, measurable results for women in tech across Canada. This is what happened in 2025.
47%
of Toast members received a raise in 2025, and 58% of those raises were 10% or more.
1 in 5
Toast members stepped into a leadership or management role in 2025.
85%
of candidates we place negotiate their offer, nearly 1.7x the industry norm.
1 in 12
Toast members transitioned into tech from another industry in 2025, breaking through in a challenging market.
The women building it
April Hicke
April built Toast around a simple conviction: that tech is better when it's built by everyone. With over 15 years in leadership and change management, she's spent her career helping organizations build teams more inclusively and intentionally.
She grew up in foster care and took a non-traditional path into tech, often as the only woman in the room. That experience shaped her drive to change the systems that weren't built for people like her.
A Certified Change Practitioner and TEDx speaker, April leads with a long-term growth mindset. She spends much of her time coaching emerging leaders and creating psychological safety inside teams, because that's where real change begins.
Nicole Shokoples
Nikki's career has lived at the intersection of strategy, change, and communications. She's built operating models, led transformations, and created brands at scale and in startups. What she's learned in both: business is always about people.
That conviction started with a sociology degree that taught her to ask who a system was designed for, and who it wasn't.
She joined Toast because she's had sponsors and opportunities that weren't always designed for women. She believes diversity of thought and experience isn't a nice-to-have, it's what makes organizations better. She's building Toast to help create a world where gender equity isn't a goal. It's how things work.
