Diversity & Inclusion at Quizlet — Why it Matters to Us

At Quizlet, we’ve built a diverse team of smart and passionate people, driven by our mission to ‘help people practice and master whatever they are learning.’ But we will always challenge ourselves to do better as we strive towards being a more diverse and inclusive team.

There has been a lot of attention on this important topic in the recent past within the tech space and beyond. Numerous studies highlight that the more diverse and inclusive a company is, the more successful it tends to be (and with happier and more productive employees). In addition, we believe it's mission critical to continue to increase diversity on our team and foster an inclusive culture, so that as a company we can build the most effective learning platform that appeals to and reflects our ever-growing global user base.

To that end, we have decided to publish our diversity demographics and compiled the data below. This post is the first of what will be annual updates on our demographics; we believe it’s important to share them publicly, as transparency and accountability are part of our core values. Diversity and inclusion has been, and will continue to be a critical driver of our success as a company and as a team.

When I look at the demographics of the Quizlet team and compare them to numbers reported by other tech companies, I’m heartened that we’re making some positive progress in hiring women into technical roles. But we must do more, and with more urgency. At the beginning of the year, I set some aggressive goals for our hiring in 2017, and we’re making great progress. So far this year, 43% of our technical hires are women, and 77% of our overall hires have come from underrepresented groups (both women and underrepresented minority groups). Also, for every role we exercise a modified “Rooney Rule”, ensuring we’ve got at least one strong candidate from an underrepresented group.

Women and underrepresented minorities are one of the primary lenses with which we look at diversity at Quizlet, but we also know there are many other ways we bring different perspectives to work. Hiring is one half of building a diverse company, but being inclusive and supportive at work is the other. For example, we’ve established annual diversity and inclusion awareness trainings with a particular focus on workplace interactions to help us collaborate and leverage the collective sum of each person’s differences, life experiences and knowledge to encourage creativity and innovation. And, this year we also extended our family leave to four months and also added a generous leave package for partners. These are just two examples of the programs — both large and small, both formal and informal — we’re supporting to help foster a diverse and inclusive environment.

Although I’m pleased with the progress we’re making at Quizlet, I know there’s much more work to be done to create a diverse and inclusive organization.

Quizlet Overall

Quizlet Tech

Quizlet Non Tech

Data from August 2017; Ethnicity refers to the EEO-1 categories which reflect the US government reporting requirements.; Other includes American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and those who prefer not to state or classify.