Feminuity is a full-service diversity, equity, and inclusion firm helping organizations realize their good intentions and produce meaningful, long-term impact.
Since 2015, they have partnered with innovative companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500s to build diverse teams, equitable systems, inclusive products, and workplace cultures where people can survive and thrive.
Feminuity is the combination of ingenuity and an equity-driven feminist practice. They take the lead with an equity-driven, feminist approach to assist businesses in creating cultures, services, and products that empower everyone and encourage innovation.
They refer ‘to feminism’ as an equity-based movement that benefits everyone. Their approach acknowledges the ‘isms’ and the need to build intentional practices to deconstruct them. They believe combining the two can help create a future that brings everyone forward.
Strategies For Inclusion
Their guiding principles shape the methods, services, and team culture. These principles include:
- Growth over Perfection
Feminuity believes in constant iteration as they respond to and anticipate change. They know complex challenges can’t be solved with single, static solutions. Therefore, they strive to build bridges through dialogue, education, shared values, and sustainable solutions. They avoid shame or blame tactics and hold space for humanity in everyone.
- Lead with Data
Numbers and data can miss essential nuances and be insufficient. Therefore, Feminuity uses an evidence-based and data-informed approach to DEI. Their service offerings are influenced by and designed using leading industry research, paired with their team’s combined decades of industry experience and interdisciplinary and orthogonal approaches.
- Connect the Dots
Feminuity “zooms” out and engages the “big” picture to make connections in their work. They draw from seemingly unrelated fields and disciplines to make new connections and achieve unique DEI insights. They view organizations as interconnected, as they know DEI efforts cannot operate in isolation and must be shared across organizations. This means supporting people to develop their DEI capacity and challenge the systems and structures that impede their ability to create positive change.
- No Size Fits All
Feminuity recognizes that over 40+ dimensions of diversity exist and that people have unique needs related to their identities and lived experiences. Organizations also have unique needs for their people, growth stage, size, and industry. An “off-the-shelf” approach to DEI is rarely practical. Hence, they design intersectional, custom-built solutions.
- Push the Boundaries
Feminuity challenges traditional norms and standards and strives to make the workplace a better place that celebrates and creates space for differences rather than demands conformity or scales inequity. They reject surface-level DEI initiatives and push for holistic approaches that care about mental health and wellness, sustainability, justice, and the collective future.
- Humans, Not Robots
Feminuity is on an ambitious mission to challenge traditional and colonial structures relating to time, professionalism, and competition. They are digital by design and work remotely and collaboratively across time zones. They design new and different ways to work to enable connections with more people and scale their efforts. Though they realize the advantages of technology, they are critical of new modes of automation, technologies, and innovations that do not put people first.
Reimagining Tech Industry
Dr. Sarah Saska is the co-founder and CEO of Feminuity, a startup investor, and an advisor. She is a social scientist and an orthogonal thinker who challenges, reimagines, and redesigns the systems, technology, and mindsets surrounding us to create a future that fosters equity for everyone.
Sarah holds a Ph.D. from Western University. In addition, she has a Master of Arts degree in Feminist and Gender Studies from the University of Ottawa (Université d’Ottawa). She earned her B.A. with honors and certification in Sexual and Gender Diversity from the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University.
Sarah is a distinguished scholar and experienced practitioner who oversaw ground-breaking doctoral research at the intersection of equity, technology, and innovation. Her research inspired Feminuity and showed how important it is for businesses in the technology and innovation sector to prioritize ethical and fair design.
Sarah was a facilitator for the SARE randomized controlled trial, which later evolved into the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance Education Program and is now implemented across Canada as the Flip the Script program to help lessen sexual assault on college campuses.
In collaboration with #movethedial, she co-authored “Inclusion, Intention, Investment: A Playbook for Women Working in Tech.” In addition, she has provided advice on several landmark studies, including “Who Are Canada’s Tech Workers?,” “Tech for All: Breaking Barriers in Toronto’s Innovation Community,” and “Canada’s Gender Equity Roadmap: A Study of Women in Tech.”
Sarah has been named among the Women’s Executive Network’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada three times (2015, 2017, and 2021), Culture Amp’s list of “Diversity and Inclusion Leaders You Should Know” in 2018 and 2019, Peak’s 2022 Emerging Leaders shaping Canada’s economy, culture, and society, as well as Create and Cultivate’s list of 10 Diversity Leaders Transforming the Workplace and Beyond.
She is an international speaker, having been part of global tech and human rights conferences, including TEDx. She has also been featured on CBC’s The National, in Fast Company and in The New York Times.
She is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at Western University and the Advisory Council for the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities at Western University. In addition, she is a former member of the Advisory Council for Equality Fund and a former member of the Board of Directors for Wen-Do Women’s Self-Defense.
The team at Feminuity comprises data analysts, researchers, consultants, design strategists, and facilitators, and each member and their expertise are crucial to making their mission a reality. To know more about their work, visit their website at https://www.feminuity.org/.
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