Community Changemaker winner April Hicke is building diversity in tech

Learn more about the Alumni Changemaker Achievement Awards.

First, April Hicke changed her life.

Now, she’s changing lives for thousands of other women.

Hicke was just 15 years old when she left a family home made unstable by her father’s addiction issues and subsequently bounced between group homes, also dropping out of high school.

Eventually, she began working in restaurants — work she likens to earning a sociology degree — and went back to school. Hicke then worked her way up from WestJet’s call centre to the airline’s change management team, helping pioneer remote work long before Zoom  became ubiquitous.

“I’ve been a changemaker my entire career,” Hicke says.

In 2022, after working for several companies leading structural transformations she and business partner Marissa McNeelands launched Toast, a membership-based women’s collective supporting women in the  technology industry, who are under-represented and often paid less than their male counterparts.

Toast is also a recruitment company for the tech sector, providing a platform for women to discuss work challenges, get access to career coaches and job opportunities, and to ask advice from others. It also partners with organizations aiming to increase gender diversity on their technical teams.

Toast has doubled its membership since early 2023 and boasts more than 20,000 women in its candidate pool. Under Hicke’s leadership as chief growth officer, Toast counts more than a hundred tech companies across Canada and the US. as clients.

For her leadership and advocacy for women in tech, Hicke will be presented with an Alumni Changemaker Achievement Award by Royal Roads University.

RRU established the awards in 2024 to celebrate the exceptional achievements and contributions of graduates who have made significant impacts on the complex challenges facing workplaces, communities and the world while embodying the university's values of caring, courage and creativity. The first winners will be honoured in a ceremony on campus  during Alumni Weekend. (That same weekend, Hicke will give a talk as one of eight speakers at TEDxRRU.)

Hicke, who grew up in Cornwall, ON and now lives in Calgary, AB earned a Royal Roads Graduate Certificate in Corporate Social Innovation while she and McNeelands were starting Toastwill be presented the Community Changemaker award, which recognizes an alum who is leading systemic community change.

Shelley Kuipers, CEO of The51, a venture fund focused on women and gender-diverse company founders, wrote a letter in support of Hicke’s nomination, lauding her efforts as a strategic advisor for Young Women in Business and as Calgary’s founding city director for WNORTH, an organization dedicated to developing women into leadership positions.

“April’s approach to life is grounded in the belief that every action, no matter how small, has the power to create ripple effects of positive change,” Kuipers wrote. “She leads with integrity, inspires those around her to reach for their full potential and never hesitates to step forward when someone needs a helping hand.”

Hicke says her motivation may have sprung from her experiences working in tech, but her core skills are grounded in her turbulent youth years. 

“I had that grit, resilience, survival drilled into me from a very young age,” she says. “And I think my ability to get to where I am right now is because I was able to ask the right questions of the right people, build the right relationships and work really, really hard.”

But her background didn’t harden her. On the contrary, it energized her pursuit of opportunities for helping others.

“When we look at tech in particular, if we're building digital products for everyone… the team actually has to represent that as well. And I'm really passionate about hiring people with different backgrounds and life experience — they bring a different way to solve problems, and that's actually how you get to innovation.”

Asked about her reaction to the RRU award, she says: “That affirmation that I'm actually driving some sort of a change in the world, especially from a university, when I didn't even graduate high school and never thought a university graduation was something that would ever be possible for me… To get any sort of an acknowledgement from a university as someone with my background for work that I've been doing my entire life and dedicated my life to is the greatest honour. I feel very, very proud to be getting it.”

The Alumni Changemaker Achievement Awards showcase the diverse talents and accomplishments of RRU's alumni network as they advance the university’s vision to inspire people with the courage to transform the world. The awards reception will be held in the Dogwood Auditorium at RRU. Learn more about Alumni Weekend.