A few years ago, Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon—a website that allows content creators to generate income from fans—penned an essay about how to attract diverse candidates for executive roles. “If your company is mostly men, make sure to have women on the interview team,” wrote Conte, who co-founded Patreon in 2013.
Conte needs to start taking his own advice. Earlier this month, Patreon’s chief people officer, Tiffany Stevenson, announced internally that she would depart at the end of November, leaving the company without a single woman among its vice presidents, senior vice presidents and C-suite officers, as shown in the org chart above. Women accounted for nearly half of the creator economy startup’s top ranks just three years ago, but a steady stream of executive resignations has left Patreon with an increasingly homogenous and insular leadership team as it struggles to innovate. Stevenson’s resignation hasn’t been previously reported.
In a message to Patreon employees earlier this month, Conte acknowledged that the departure of Stevenson, who is also Black, put the company in an awkward position. “I want to call attention to the fact that our executive team is now all male—and that’s not OK with me,” he wrote. He added that Patreon would primarily interview women for the chief people officer position “to maximize our chances of diversifying our executive team with this hire.”