NerdWallet diversity head says the real challenge is retention, not hiring

Shai Poulard, head of global diversity, inclusion, and belonging at NerdWallet, likes to say she didn’t start her career on “this side of the chaos.”

After earning an undergraduate degree in biology, Poulard worked in biotech for over six years. As she approached her seventh year in the field, her career plateaued, and she started to consider a pivot.

“I did some self-reflecting and realized that in every role, up until that point, I had been the person to champion a learning and development initiative or a DE&I initiative, before the term DEI, and even the function, existed for a lot of companies,” Poulard told HR Brew.

She went back to school and earned her MBA at Pepperdine University, where her mentor introduced her to people engagement. “That’s where I had my aha moment of ‘I should have been here all along,’” Poulard said.

Poulard took over as NerdWallet’s head of diversity, inclusion, and belonging in November and is currently rolling out an allyship program at the personal finance company.

Looking beyond diversity benchmarks. Women represent 51% of NerdWallet’s global workforce, according to its 2022 ESG report, while men account for 49%. Forty-four percent of its US employees identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color, while 53% are white.

Having a diverse workforce helps NerdWallet create content that resonates and lands with different communities, Poulard said. The company regularly shares lists of Black-owned or Hispanic-owned banks and credit unions, features an LGBTQ+ finance guide on its site, and publishes segments that touch on financial barriers that underrepresented communities face, such as the racial wealth gap.

NerdWallet has said there’s no benchmark at which it plans to stop its diversity work. And Poulard said focusing solely on the “diversity” part of DE&I can be limiting.

“Of course, increasing representation and making sure that we have representation within the organization,” is a focus for NerdWallet, she said. “But simultaneously, it’s also about [making] sure we have the right culture to empower that representation.”

Poulard said her team is focused not only on recruiting diverse talent, but also holding onto these employees. “You can go out and look for talent, right?” she said. “Now retaining that talent and making that talent feel empowered, and that sense of belonging, that’s where it gets tricky.” She added her team is supportive of employees who leave NerdWallet for better opportunities, but never wants to see staff leave over job dissatisfaction.

A focus on allyship. NerdWallet already has a number of employee resource groups (ERGs) geared toward women, employees of color, as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community. Poulard said she’s now focused on developing “thoughtful and intentional programming and resources” for NerdWallet employees who may not be part of these communities, but want to commit to allyship.

Starting this month, NerdWallet will roll out resources around “activating allyship,” Poulard said. Eventually, she hopes to introduce an “inclusion champions” program focused on supporting her department’s diversity, inclusion, and belonging efforts, with an eye toward holding teams accountable, as well as training participants on how to navigate difficult conversations in the workplace.

Poulard sees “allyship” as an action, and she said she hopes this programming will encourage employees to be honest and vulnerable about where they are in their allyship journey, while actively engaging as allies.

“It’s about your actions, not about what you think or how you perceive yourself in the space,” she said.