KeyAnna Schmiedl

It’s easy for a tech company growing at a meteoric clip and focused on its ascendancy to neglect company culture and inclusion on its way up, losing out on a chance to make them part of its bones. Not so at Wayfair—or at least not anymore, thanks to KeyAnna Schmiedl. Schmiedl joined the soaring home furnishings e-commerce giant in 2019 to help it get serious about inclusion, creating a model for other tech companies to follow. (She worked on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at Santander Bank before Wayfair lured her over.) On her watch, Wayfair has worked with such organizations as ReacHire, Boston While Black, and Apprenti to diversify its hires. Clearly, the effort is needed: When Wayfair released its first DEI report in 2021, it found, unsurprisingly, that women of color are woefully underrepresented at the company (as in tech in general), making up only 8% of its more than 16,000 employees. But the tide is turning: Schmiedl has helped Wayfair build a companywide DEI council to foster an inclusive culture and has worked on giving recruiters the training they need to hire from a more diverse pool.