We’re committing to a more diverse Twitter

Friday, 28 August 2015

We want the makeup of our company to reflect the vast range of people who use Twitter. Doing so will help us build a product to better serve people around the world. While we’ve already been working towards internal diversity goals at different levels of the company, I’m very pleased to report that we are now setting company-wide diversity goals — and we’re sharing them publicly.

We considered simply setting company-wide hiring goals, but we don’t want to stop at that. If our aim is to build a company we can really be proud of — one that’s more inclusive and diverse — we need to make sure it’s a great place for both new and current employees to work and to grow. That’s why these new goals focus on increasing the overall representation of women and underrepresented minorities throughout the whole company.

Furthermore, it’s important to define what these changes will yield a year from now. We’re holding ourselves accountable to these measurable goals, as should you.

Here are the representations goals we’ve set for 2016:

  • Increase women overall to 35%
  • Increase women in tech roles to 16%
  • Increase women in leadership roles to 25%
  • Increase underrepresented minorities overall to 11%*
  • Increase underrepresented minorities in tech roles to 9%*
  • Increase underrepresented minorities in leadership roles to 6%*

*US only

Last year, we voluntarily shared our ethnic and diversity data and committed to diversity as a critical business issue. Since then, we’ve expanded our efforts, launching a number of programs and partnerships to help move the needle both at Twitter and, to the extent possible, across our industry. These include:

  • Building strong partnerships with organizations that create opportunities for underrepresented minorities, such as Management Leaders of Tomorrow, #YesWeCode, the Level Playing Field Institute, and the local and national offices of NBMBAA.
  • Actively recruiting at colleges and universities for underrepresented talent. Specifically, we’ll be on campus at a number of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions this fall. We’re also meeting with student groups representing women, Hispanics, and African-Americans at a larger group of campuses. To see which schools we’ll visit this fall, follow @TwitterU. You can also apply for an open position at t.co/university.
  • Refining our recruiting and hiring practices to attract more diverse candidates. For example, we’re using Textio to ensure our job descriptions appeal to a broad range of applicants, increasing the diversity of interview panels, and posting openings where more underrepresented candidates will see them.
  • Continuing our strong support for women in tech. We launched our inaugural @WomEng Grace Hopper Fellowship Program that will sponsor 10 women to attend the Grace Hopper Conference; we’ve partnered with UC Berkeley’s Girls in Engineering program to teach 65 middle school girls how to code at our Twitter @NeighborNest; hosted workshops for Code First: Girls in London, where we offered 100 women graduates career advice; and hosted summer programs for Girls Who Code in our San Francisco, New York, and Boston offices.


As we look ahead, we see opportunity rather than a challenge: an opportunity to build a platform and a company that will better serve the diverse community on Twitter and the increasingly diverse one at Twitter.

Today we’ve outlined what we believe progress should look like. We expect to come back to you next year and show we’ve delivered, and to be held accountable to it!

We’re always looking for talented individuals to join our team. If you share our passion for giving everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers, please apply here.

Where we are today:

We’re committing to a more diverse Twitter

Click here to see our 2014 EEO-1 report.