About Marissa McNeelands
Marissa McNeelands is the Founder & CEO of Toast, a company that uses AI to help advocate for greater gender diversity in tech. After spending almost a decade in the tech industry as a Data & AI Product Leader, Marissa found herself more often than not being the only woman in the room. Struggling to hire women into roles on her teams, and gain buy-in from the men around her to focus on gender equity, Marissa founded Toast to empower women in tech to get what they want, while giving hiring leaders a tangible way to increase gender diversity in their talent pool. Marissa has a Master’s of Management in Artificial Intelligence from Queen’s University and was recently featured as a 2023 Champion of Change by Glory Media. Toast was recently featured in Forbes Magazine and won the Women in IT DEI Initiative of the Year.