A Calgary-based recruitment platform focused on advancing women in technology has brought on a major player to help drive its next phase of growth.
Nicole Shokoples, a veteran of Alberta's innovation sector, has been appointed Chief Operating Officer at Toast, the women-focused talent platform that launched in 2022. The move marks a significant expansion of Toast's leadership team as the company scales operations and prepares to pivot into workforce intelligence services.
Shokoples spent years shaping Alberta's innovation landscape at Alberta Innovates, where she held roles including Chief of Staff and Vice-President of Stakeholder Relations and Planning. That background managing complex, multi-stakeholder programs caught the attention of Toast founder and CEO April Hicke, who previously worked alongside Shokoples at ATB Financial.
"I don't think you always get the opportunity to bring someone in who already gets it. Our mission, our values, understanding all of it at that level, the market, the moment we're in: all of it together."
Toast has built an impressive foundation since its inception. The platform now boasts a network of over 35,000 women and has achieved meaningful revenue milestones while proving its business model works. The company uses blind hiring processes to eliminate bias and pairs recruitment services with mentorship and career development support—all designed to close the gender pay gap and diversify Canada's tech sector.
The company recently launched the Toast Institute, a not-for-profit arm dedicated to advancing women's participation and leadership in technology through research, workforce development, and systems-level collaboration.
But Toast's ambitions extend well beyond traditional recruitment. Hicke revealed the company is developing a "workforce health dashboard for HR leaders"—essentially a credit score for talent health that tracks engagement, retention, hiring funnel health, pay equity, and internal mobility across an organization.
"We've been heads down building for a few years now," Hicke said. "We're not just operating as a recruitment company and community, we're moving into a workforce intelligence company."
For Shokoples, the role represents an opportunity to apply her operational expertise toward a mission she believes is critical for Canada's future. "If we want to build in Canada, we need the talent to do it, and that talent pool and what it builds needs to be inclusive," she told media outlets.
This story was adapted from reporting by BetaKit. Read the original article at BetaKit.