Diversity & Inclusion at Impossible Foods
(Impact Report 2019)
TEAM AND COMMUNITY
We’re early in our journey, but we strive to be among the most inclusive, diverse and supportive places to work.
In early 2019, we were accepted to join the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion(opens in a new tab)™. CEO Action is the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity and inclusion within the workplace. We’ve pledged our business to three core commitments:
1. Continue to cultivate workplaces that support open dialogue on complex, and sometimes difficult, conversations about diversity and inclusion.
2. Implement and expand unconscious bias education,
3. Share the best known actions — those that work and those that don’t work
In order to monitor, maintain, and improve representation, we actively track gender statistics across the company. For 2018 through now (the first quarter of 2019), women constitute 48% of the company’s workforce, 52% of the leadership roles that are director-level and above, and 25% of the executive team. We’ve also formalized diversity and inclusion training for our management team.
We also welcomed the first woman to our board(opens in a new tab) in early 2019 – long overdue and a huge win for the team. Vanessa Wittman brings more than 30 years of experience in finance and tech, from start-ups to big multinationals – a sterling addition by any measure.
This year also saw the formation of our first Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): Impossible Pride and Women of Impossible. These ERGs have the formal support of the executive team, as well as active executive sponsors.
IMPOSSIBLE PRIDE CHARTER
Our goal for Impossible Pride is to follow that lead and ensure diversity and acceptance at all levels of the company. As an employee resource group, Impossible Pride exists to provide guidance to our leadership and help ensure that everyone — particularly individuals who identify as a member or ally of the LGBTQ+ community — feels welcomed to be their authentic selves and feels included here at Impossible Foods.
WOMEN OF IMPOSSIBLE CHARTER
Women at Impossible exists to uplift and support anyone and everyone who identifies as female. We aim to help each other and to inspire the larger Impossible community by understanding and learning from each others’ experiences – and fostering a positive, productive, and healthy environment for all employees, regardless of gender.
COMMUNITY
We are committed to addressing hunger in our own community. Last year, we donated over half a million pounds of Impossible Burger to local communities in need through Feeding America.
In late 2018, the most destructive wildfire in California state history struck Paradise, in what is now called the Camp Fire Complex. To support our northern neighbors, we donated our product to residents displaced by the fire. The owner of the Sexy Panda Food Truck(opens in a new tab) spent weeks in the Chico area distributing a multitude of donations, including 30,000 Impossible sliders to evacuees.