Here’s How to Wield Empathy and Data to Build an Inclusive Team

When Ciara Trinidad left her post as Lever’s Head of Diversity and Inclusion, the numbers made her understandably proud: The startup’s team of 125 people was 59% women, 39% men, and 2% gender nonconforming. Even the sales team — historically a male-dominated group — had a 50/50 gender split. “The product team was at about 40% white; the majority was a mix of every other government-issued race or ethnicity,” she says.

In this exclusive interview, Trinidad shares how she got the job done with two secret weapons: empathy and data. She explains how to build a dashboard to surface your hiring numbers, and why a culture of data underpins a culture of inclusion. And she notes that, when it comes to building your D&I team, project-management chops and a passion for doing the work are the only bona fides you really need.