The Macdonald town hall\u2014organized by Toby Shannan, one of the firm\u2019s most senior leaders at the time\u2014was meant to demonstrate that while Shopify employees might differ on political or historical issues, they were united in their belief in the power of entrepreneurship. Shannan and Nejatian would be joined by Kyle Brennan Sh\u00e0winipines\u00ec and Tracy Ridler, key members of the firm\u2019s Indigenous employee group.<\/p>\n
The discussion quickly turned into a debate. Nejatian opened with the claim that he\u2019d visited more First Nations reserves than anybody, then defended Macdonald as a product of his time who nevertheless should be celebrated for his role in unifying Canada. Sh\u00e0winipines\u00ec and Ridler countered by detailing how Macdonald\u2019s policies had harmed successive generations of Indigenous peoples, and contributed to the economic inequality they continue to experience today.<\/p>\n
Outside the town hall, business was booming. The COVID-19 pandemic drove<\/a> hundreds of thousands of businesses to Shopify\u2019s technology. As its customer base grew, so did its workforce, doubling to 10,000 people between 2019 and 2021. The company touted the \u201cdiverse global talent pool\u201d that its new remote-first strategy<\/a> had made available, and launched new programs to support staff and entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds.<\/p>\n In June 2020, two months before Macdonald\u2019s statue fell, Shopify had announced<\/a> a series of new partnerships to support entrepreneurship in Indigenous communities, which the company said it recognized had \u201cconfronted systemic racism and injustices, institutionally and otherwise\u201d for \u201ccenturies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n \t \t \n\tBy Yet internally all was not well. As some staff saw it, a series of decisions taken by the company\u2019s leadership showed they were never truly committed to diversity and equity. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees suggest Shopify often used diversity as a marketing ploy, and that internal support for major equity initiatives faded over time, with executives increasingly treating them as a distraction from the core business of building e-commerce tools. The Logic is not identifying these sources because they are not authorized to speak publicly about their time at the company.<\/p>\n Shopify was not the only tech firm to trumpet its commitment to diversity, equity and opportunity for underrepresented communities when there was broad public support for those issues\u2014only to abandon such work when the political music changed. But the company\u2019s handling of such initiatives was clumsy from the start.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sources claim that employee resource groups were gradually deprioritized, and key equity partnerships floundered under the awkward handling of the marketing team. Wavering internal support turned into concrete action in recent months when entire teams dedicated to helping Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs were laid off.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some former staff say these cuts were just business. But ex-employees who worked to get more merchants from underrepresented communities on the platform believe their work was a meaningful part of that business. They say the programs generated real returns, contributing both financially and philosophically to the company\u2019s goals of making commerce better for everyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shopify also started to discourage conversations about race and identity as a distraction\u2014even as senior leadership increasingly took to social media to share their own political and ideological beliefs. Those changes came amid a broader shift in the company\u2019s corporate culture, one that current and former staff say has made it a harder place to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shopify\u2019s shuttering of its equity initiatives is not unique<\/a>. Businesses the world over have backtracked on their diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) commitments in response to a crackdown launched by U.S. President Donald Trump. During the first four months of 2025, mentions of \u201cDEI\u201d or \u201cdiversity, equity and inclusion\u201d in transcripts of corporate events and documents globally dropped 32 per cent year over year, according to data from AlphaSense. The change has been particularly pronounced at the Silicon Valley tech giants on which Shopify\u2019s top leaders have increasingly modeled their business.\u00a0<\/p>\n As companies the world over slash DEI initiatives, Shopify could be a case study, and potentially a cautionary tale, for what comes next. The company went early and cut hard, removing parts of its business that former employees say were bringing in new customers and generating revenue. And its changes to internal programs designed to foster diversity and inclusivity, sources argue, have made the company a less welcoming place to work and alienated staff.<\/p>\n \u201cWe retired some programs because we believe that true progress is driven by more than corporate virtue signaling,\u201d says Shopify spokesperson Ben McConaghy. \u201cWe hire the sharpest minds, whatever their background, and put every idea through rigorous, open debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis stress-testing of ideas,\u201d he continued, \u201cproduces stronger solutions and keeps us focused on what matters most for our merchants.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The shift in culture came from the top. Starting in mid-2020, a cohort of established leaders who\u2019d worked for years alongside CEO and founder Tobi L\u00fctke\u2014and could challenge his decisions when they disagreed\u2014left and were replaced by more pliable executives.\u00a0<\/p>\n With L\u00fctke firmly in control, Shopify has spent the last three years cutting its workforce and focusing more narrowly on helping merchants using its technology to boost sales. In January, four years on from the Macdonald town hall, the company\u2019s Black and Indigenous entrepreneur programs, which at the time reported into Nejatian, were shut down entirely.<\/p>\n \t\t \tThe head of a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald after it was torn down following a demonstration in Montreal in August 2020. Photo:<\/strong> The Canadian Press\/Graham Hughes\t<\/p>\n In the years before the pandemic, Shopify had set up small teams focused on fostering diversity and belonging in-house and creating social impact outside the company. Employee resource groups brought together people with shared identities, starting with those who identified as Black, Indigenous, or LGBTQ2S+, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n Staff volunteers led the groups, which organized activities for their members and represented the firm at events like the Afrotech conference in Los Angeles and Toronto\u2019s Pride parade. The groups had their own channels on Shopify\u2019s Slack where employees could gather and talk. The talent development team had also set up a company-wide #belonging channel, which would later become the site for an internal firestorm.\u00a0<\/p>\n The firm worked with several organizations that serve underrepresented communities, including Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto. It was a founding sponsor of the Black Innovation Fellowship, a program the Toronto Metropolitan University-based DMZ incubator launched to \u201cstrengthen Black entrepreneurship and advocate for race equity.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite launching a raft of projects, former employees say they felt Shopify\u2019s diversity initiatives were often reactive, created in response to public backlash against its business decisions. In February 2017, the firm\u2019s decision to host the store of Breitbart, an extreme right-wing U.S. publication, was met with strong internal<\/a> and external criticism<\/a>. At the time, L\u00fctke defended<\/a> the relationship, arguing that while Shopify didn\u2019t like Breitbart, its commercial activities should be protected as free speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the aftermath of the Breitbart controversy, Shopify hired staff focused on diversity, belonging and community. Sources say senior leaders didn\u2019t put a lot of backing behind equity work. The volunteer leaders of the ERGs were eventually given budgets of a few thousand dollars to spend on organizing events and hiring speakers, although the cash was tightly controlled. Managers didn\u2019t always appreciate the work that went into running the groups or factor that work into performance reviews, according to former employees. Bosses made clear that ERG work \u201cdidn\u2019t belong on company time,\u201d one source says, adding that the ERGs were sometimes treated as \u201ccounter to business.\u201d<\/p>\n A series of internal incidents also left employees from underrepresented groups wondering just how well the company\u2019s leaders understood their lived experiences. They cite the release of an updated version of the firm\u2019s design manifesto, dubbed Polaris. On the cover was an illustration of a Mountie gazing over an apparently empty mountain landscape at the North Star. Inside, the document used the colonization of Canada as an analogy for how Shopify wanted to do business. Polaris referenced the fur trade and the Silk Road that carried goods between Asia and Europe for hundreds of years as landmark eras for commerce. Both brought considerable violence to the people along their route, though the design manifesto framed them as an inspiration to forge a new story.\u00a0<\/p>\n The document made some Indigenous employees uncomfortable, given the Royal Canadian Mounted Police\u2019s history<\/a> as a colonial enforcement unit. Executives also used the colonization of Canada as a reference point for the company\u2019s vision in multiple areas, sources say.<\/p>\n The disquiet around the design manifesto wasn\u2019t an isolated incident. At a Shopify hackathon in July 2020\u2014where employees had 48 hours to create new projects\u2014the company\u2019s culture team produced a video called \u201cTen Slack Commandments.\u201d Set to the tune of rapper The Notorious B.I.G\u2019s \u201cTen Crack Commandments,\u201d the video explained how staff should be using Slack\u2014instructions included setting a Slack status, using pronouns in profiles and using threads to reply to messages to avoid creating too much noise. L\u00fctke tweeted a screen recording of the video.<\/p>\n In Shopify\u2019s #belonging Slack channel, which had been created pre-pandemic as a space to talk about cultural and diversity issues, many staff said the video was problematic, and called for it to be taken down. One employee noted that predominantly white teams had repeatedly used rap and Black culture inappropriately. While it featured no Black employees, the video included several Black memojis, which, one employee wrote in Slack, \u201camounted to blackface\u201d if the creators themselves weren\u2019t Black, according to screenshots obtained by The Logic.<\/p>\n As the #belonging channel filled with criticisms of the video, one employee pointed out that someone had added a noose emoji to Shopify\u2019s Slack, prompting dozens of replies and emoji reactions expressing outrage. That afternoon, Brittany Forsyth, the firm\u2019s then-chief talent officer, wrote that the management team would \u201creview and reflect\u201d over the weekend. \u201cI thank everyone for your opinions. I know they are deeply personal. We heard you,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Some employees interpreted that response as a tactic to shut down the conversation and criticized the leadership team for needing to deliberate about something that concerned staff considered so \u201cclear-cut.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n L\u00fctke deleted his tweet of the video, but an unlisted version is still available<\/a> on what appears to be his YouTube account. The CEO also intervened in Slack, locking down the #belonging channel so only a select group of moderators and admins could post in it. In a message, he said the channel had turned into an echo chamber of \u201cextreme toxicity,\u201d and argued staff should instead have given \u201cvalid feedback\u201d about the video to the teams involved. Employees were flouting their code of conduct by engaging in bad-faith communication, L\u00fctke suggested. He insisted Shopify was \u201cfully committed to the ideas of equality of opportunity and belonging.\u201d L\u00fctke\u2019s post was met by a series of confused and sad-face emoji reactions.<\/p>\n \t\t \tShopify founder Tobi L\u00fctke has likened the eliminated bits of the company to optional video game content, describing them as \u201cside quests.\u201d Photo:<\/strong> Bloomberg via Getty Images\/Dustin Chambers\t<\/p>\n As the fallout from the #belonging channel shutdown simmered, staff were busy launching two of the company\u2019s biggest-ever programs for entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Build Native, which launched publicly in February 2021, was designed to increase the number of Indigenous merchants on Shopify\u2019s platform and help them succeed. The program was developed by Ridler, Sh\u00e0winipines\u00ec and David Pereira in the months following the Macdonald town hall. In addition to Indigenous entrepreneurs in North America, Build Native also initially supported merchants in Australia, New Zealand and American Samoa.<\/p>\n Participating merchants received an extended free trial subscription to the software\u201460 days compared to the regular 14\u2014and access to a Slack channel where they could learn from each other. Staff had the authority to issue discounts to those customers, or send them free products like card readers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The program also helped promote Indigenous businesses. The company\u2019s marketing team \u201chad a tendency, before COVID, to always go to the same merchants,\u201d one source says, citing apparel brands Allbirds and Gymshark as two examples. Both were major Shopify success stories, starting out on the platform and growing into very large businesses. But aspiring Indigenous entrepreneurs didn\u2019t necessarily identify with the young white men behind such brands.<\/p>\n Build Native helped get more Indigenous stores front and center in promotional material, featuring them in the company\u2019s case <\/a>studies<\/a> and videos<\/a> about e-commerce success stories. The program also took participating merchants to real-world selling opportunities like New Mexico\u2019s Santa Fe Indian Market, which hosts tens of thousands of people each year, as well as smaller events in Toronto and Vancouver.<\/p>\n Indigenous merchants say they benefited<\/a> from the community Build Native assembled as it helped them get more exposure. The program\u2019s marketing campaigns converted at a higher rate than the company\u2019s advertising efforts more generally, one source says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Build Native was explicitly designed to be a commercial program, not a philanthropic or feel-good exercise. \u201cTo do this work long-term, it had to generate revenue,\u201d says a source, adding that the program could have been cancelled on \u201ca whim of an executive\u201d if it wasn\u2019t clear Shopify was getting something back.<\/p>\n Alongside Build Native, the company also launched Build Black. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, many large firms made public commitments to better support the Black community. That June, the firm began promoting<\/a> Black-owned merchants in its Shop app, and donated<\/a> $1 million to groups including the NAACP\u2019s Legal Defense Fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the months following Floyd\u2019s murder, L\u00fctke and other top executives met John Hope Bryant, CEO of Operation Hope, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that tries to make \u201ccapitalism work for the underserved.\u201d In October 2020, Shopify announced<\/a> it would put up as much as US$130 million in resources for an Operation Hope initiative now called 1 Million Black Businesses (1MBB), designed to help create that many firms by 2030.<\/p>\n Build Black, Shopify\u2019s in-house version of that program, mirrored Build Native. Launched around the same time, it was designed to support Black entrepreneurs with educational materials, a shared Slack channel and events to showcase their businesses. Merchants involved say they found the resources useful, and that the program helped<\/a> them through rough financial patches.\u00a0<\/p>\n Build Black was also used as a marketing tool for the company. Shopify \u201cput energy into this\u201d because the firm \u201csaw value from a brand perspective,\u201d one source says. Its commitment to Build Black was always \u201creactionary,\u201d another adds.<\/p>\n In July 2021, Shopify partnered with Facebook, the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business and other Indigenous entrepreneurship organizations to launch We Thrive, a three-week advertising campaign<\/a> on Instagram and Facebook. Under the partnership, Shopify selected 37 Indigenous merchants to feature in the posts and Facebook provided the ad space, with each firm committing $1 million to the initiative, according to one source.<\/p>\n We Thrive was dreamed up by Facebook and Shopify\u2019s marketing teams, not the Build Native staff who worked with Indigenous entrepreneurs every day. And neither company was properly prepared for what came next. Instead of attracting new buyers to the Indigenous-owned stores, the We Thrive posts were bombarded by racist and vitriolic comments from Facebook users. It fell to Shopify\u2019s social care team to monitor the backlash to the campaign, while the Build Native team was left to salvage relationships with the Indigenous entrepreneurs. We Thrive was shut down early, and most of the participating merchants never got the sales boost they\u2019d been promised.<\/p>\n The We Thrive campaign did end up helping one participant: Facebook. Staff told their Shopify counterparts that the social media giant\u2019s internal \u201cbrand lift\u201d measure showed users thought more favourably of Facebook because of its role in We Thrive, sources say.\u00a0<\/p>\n Also in July 2021, Shopify hired Brandon Davenport, a marketing executive based in Los Angeles, to lead its equitable commerce strategy. Under Davenport, the team, which included Build Black and Build Native, grew to include entrepreneurship programs for women and youth, as well as company-backed employee volunteerism. The unit reported to COO Shannan, who former staff say championed its work.\u00a0<\/p>\n A lot of tech companies made commitments to equity in 2020, but Shopify was actually following through, said Ewuraesi Thompson, then-senior strategic operations manager at the firm during an October 2022 event<\/a>. \u201cIt feeds into our mission of making commerce better for everyone, and everyone includes Black businesses,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know that they\u2019re doing amazing so we really want to invest in them to help them be on the same level as everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n The company was also looking at diversity issues within its own ranks. In 2020, the company\u2019s workforce was 46 per cent Caucasian, a figure that rose to 60 per cent for leadership roles, according to a sustainability report published in May 2021. Black people made up less than three per cent and Indigenous people less than one per cent of either category.\u00a0<\/p>\n To change this, the company had \u201cembedded\u201d diversity and belonging into \u201call stages\u201d of hiring, the report said. It also engaged recruitment agencies to help find candidates from underrepresented communities for its customer support organization, and gave leaders anti-bias training. \u201cIn 2020, we added our voices to the global, collective movement for intentional action, engagement and progress\u201d on diversity and belonging, the firm\u2019s sustainability report stated.<\/p>\n By early 2023, the team focused on internal inclusion had grown to over a dozen people under David King III, head of diversity, belonging and social impact, who\u2019d previously led diversity work at Airbnb and the U.S. State Department. The company recruited more staff from underrepresented backgrounds, and helped train them for more senior roles, a source says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shopify\u2019s employee handbook, called \u201cCheckout,\u201d included a section explaining why increasing representation and making people feel like they belonged at the firm was so important to helping them succeed. Diversity and inclusion were \u201chugely critical\u201d to creating \u201ca healthy culture\u201d at the company, wrote Shavonne Hasfal-McIntosh, the firm\u2019s inclusion and innovation lead at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cCan this work cause discomfort? Absolutely,\u201d wrote Hasfal-McIntosh. \u201cBut consider the alternative, and the damage it could have on our culture, our product and our merchants.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t \tIn January of this year, Shopify laid off the equitable commerce team that supported Black, Indigenous and women entrepreneurs. The programs had fallen under the remit of COO Kaz Nejatian in late 2024. Photo:<\/strong> The Canadian Press\/Chris Young\t<\/p>\n As the pandemic wore on, Shopify\u2019s culture began to change, ex-employees say. The firm\u2019s top ranks had been filled<\/a> by longtime leaders who\u2019d helped grow the company alongside L\u00fctke. Former staff say those executives\u2014including Shannan and chief product officer Craig Miller, who had joined the firm in September 2011\u2014could stand up to L\u00fctke.<\/p>\n Miller left<\/a> in September 2020, with L\u00fctke taking over responsibility for product. It was the first change of many at the top. Forsyth, to whom the in-house diversity team had reported, departed<\/a> in April 2021 alongside longtime chief legal officer Joe Frasca.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shannan\u2014one of the firm\u2019s earliest management hires and the leadership team\u2019s elder statesman\u2014left his role as COO in September 2022 to take<\/a> a board seat. His replacement was Nejatian, who\u2019d joined in September 2019 and quickly moved up through the product ranks. The firm\u2019s equitable commerce strategy, which Shannan had championed, was moved under Tia Silas, hired from Wells Fargo in April 2022 as chief people officer.<\/p>\n As the pandemic boom faded, so did Shopify\u2019s bumper growth<\/a>. Large-scale layoffs hit the tech sector, and the Canadian commerce company was no exception. In July 2022, the firm cut<\/a> 10 per cent of its 10,000-strong workforce, including some teams that were \u201cconvenient to have but too far removed from building products,\u201d L\u00fctke wrote in a staff memo<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was the firm\u2019s first large-scale layoff, and Harley Finkelstein, one of the most senior executives at the firm and currently its president, said both internally and publicly<\/a> that there wouldn\u2019t be another. Then, in May 2023, the company announced<\/a> it would cut another 20 per cent of its workforce, around 2,300 people, including by selling its entire logistics unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n L\u00fctke likened the eliminated bits of the company to optional video game content, describing them as \u201cside quests.\u201d Shopify was \u201csubtracting everything that\u2019s in the way of making the best possible product,\u201d he wrote in a staff memo<\/a>, adding that the firm\u2019s main quest was \u201cto make commerce simpler, easier, more democratized, more participatory and more common.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just the number of people cut that showed a change of direction, but also who was cut. The company laid off the bulk of its internal diversity and belonging team, including King. The employee resource groups\u2014which had previously organized events and brought together workers from underrepresented communities\u2014were also stripped of their funding and left in limbo, former staff say. \u201cThe edict was, \u2018You focus on your main job, and that\u2019s it,\u2019\u201d says one.<\/p>\n Other former staff say ERG leaders had unrealistic expectations of what the groups could achieve internally, and that employees should not have been surprised that company leadership was singularly focused on achieving its business objectives. One ex-employee says many staff in a German office weren\u2019t eager to participate in the DEI initiatives, and that Indigenous hiring targets didn\u2019t make sense for most European offices.<\/p>\n The appointment of Nejatian as COO in September 2022 coincided with notable changes in the company\u2019s culture. Leadership became less accepting of staff feedback and executives discouraged internal discussion of political issues and contentious merchants like Breitbart and Libs of TikTok. Sources also claim such complaints were treated as a distraction from the firm\u2019s core commerce mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n In late 2022, the company moved its internal communications from Slack to Meta\u2019s Workplace. Instead of group-based discussions in channels, the new system required employees to talk via private messages, or to follow colleagues whose posts would then pop up in their feeds. \u201cThere was no rational rhyme or reason to this, as far as we could see from a work process perspective,\u201d one source says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The platform switch stifled conversation, because staff could no longer set up their own spaces to chat in groups, another source says. \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t an approved thing to talk about, then you couldn\u2019t talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n That hasn\u2019t stopped Shopify\u2019s leadership team from weighing in on political and cultural issues in public. Current and former staff point out that L\u00fctke and Nejatian have regularly posted or reposted such takes on social media. For example, L\u00fctke voiced<\/a> his support for Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang\u2019s stance that the startup would hire for merit, excellence and intelligence (MEI), implicitly contrasted with DEI.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nejatian, meanwhile, has posted<\/a> that Canada needs to \u201cfight the woke revisionism\u201d about its history. In a post<\/a> on X endorsing Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, he claimed Canada was \u201con the verge of collapse,\u201d in part because \u201cwe are being told that our friends are all racists and bigots and that our ancestors and history are evil.\u201d<\/p>\n Nejatian is also reportedly<\/a> a major donor to True North, a conservative website run by his wife Candice Malcolm. Former staff say they were disturbed by the outlet\u2019s coverage, such as a book it helped publish that disputed the well-established negative impacts residential schools had on Indigenous communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last November, True North put out<\/a> a children\u2019s book in defense of the legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald. Nejatian continues to push<\/a> for the Montreal statue to be put back up.<\/p>\n \t\t \tThe \u201canti-woke\u201d charge in Silicon Valley has been pushed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk, men whom ex-Shopify employees claim L\u00fctke admires. Photo:<\/strong> AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool\t<\/p>\n Shopify has been, in some ways, well ahead of the anti-DEI wave. In the U.S., President Donald Trump\u2019s second term has accelerated<\/a> the \u201canti-woke\u201d charge. In Silicon Valley, that effort has been led by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk, men whom ex-Shopify employees claim L\u00fctke admires and with whom he identifies. In January, Meta ended many of its internal<\/a> DEI programs and shut down the third-party fact-checking system<\/a> on Facebook and Instagram, which conservatives complained<\/a> was biased. Musk, meanwhile, has used Trump\u2019s authority to direct the slashing of all kinds of U.S. government operations, including purging<\/a> DEI staff and initiatives.<\/p>\n Shopify had already cut most of its diversity and belonging team, but more cuts were to come. In January of this year, the firm laid off<\/a> the equitable commerce team that supported Black, Indigenous and women entrepreneurs. The programs had fallen under Nejatian\u2019s remit in late 2024 when Silas departed.<\/p>\n
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