Lyft’s second head of diversity wants to take a more holistic approach

IPO-bound Lyft has employed a head of diversity and inclusion before, but this time, the person in this role has a more holistic mission. Today, Lyft is announcing Monica Poindexter, formerly Facebook’s global head of diversity business partners, has joined the company to lead the transportation company’s inclusion and diversity efforts.

“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. “I’m taking the time to understand the processes internally and identify areas where we can intentionally embed inclusion and diversity into our processes.”

While Poindexter will report to Lyft VP of Talent and Inclusion Nilka Thomas, what ultimately led Poindexter to take the job at Lyft was her sense of commitment from Lyft’s co-founders, John Zimmer and Logan Green.

“I interviewed with John and Logan and was also interviewing them about commitment from the leadership team,” Poindexter said. “That was a key deciding factor. I think that this work is difficult enough and you do want to be sure that you have the top-down support from leadership and are open and willing to learn but also to evolve.”

Lyft brought on Tariq Meyers to serve as its first-ever head of inclusion and diversity back in September 2016. Within his first year on the job, Lyft released its first diversity report, which showed numbers comparable to the likes of Uber, Facebook and Google. Meyers left Lyft in April 2018 to serve as Coinbase’s global head of belonging, inclusion and employee experience.

Last September, Lyft unveiled its second annual diversity report, which showed little change from the year prior. At the time, 40 percent of Lyft’s workforce identified as female while 52 percent of its employees were white.