Yoast Launches Fund to Increase Speaker Diversity at Tech Conferences

In an effort to increase speaker diversity at conferences worldwide, the team at Yoast SEO has launched a diversity fund. The fund will pledge a minimum of €25,000 each year. Its purpose is to remove the financial burdens that can cause minorities or underrepresented groups to speak at conferences.

“There are WordCamps throughout the world, these are conferences about, by and for the WordPress community,” Joost de Valk said.

“While we already sponsor a lot of them, they tend to not have the budget to pay for speakers’ travel and accommodation cost. The same applies to other conferences about open source, certainly those that are not commercially run. We want to take away that particular reason for not having a diverse conference.”

Eligible candidates will be reimbursed €1,000 for travel and accommodations per event. In order to qualify for the fund, speakers must meet the following requirements:

Is a part of – or identifies as part of – a typically underrepresented group.

The conference is not commercial.

The conference targets either the WordPress, Magento, or TYPO3 community.

Has been accepted as a speaker to the conference.

To submit an application, email diversity-fund at yoast.com where applications are reviewed within a week.