Before establishing Kanarys just over a year ago with two co-founders, Mandy Price had already achieved considerable success as an attorney in private practice.

The graduate of Harvard Law School wasn't compelled by necessity to begin her company, which provides businesses with a data-driven method for evaluating the effectiveness of their diversity and inclusion initiatives, but she felt a strong need to do so.

Currently, following its initial year, the company’s client base includes prominent organizations such as Yum Brands, the Dallas Mavericks, and Neiman Marcus – a total of around a dozen companies – and it has secured $3 million in seed funding to facilitate its growth.

Price’s motivation for creating Kanarys stemmed from her personal professional experiences. It wasn’t isolated incidents of microaggressions, disparities in compensation, or the dismissive attitudes of peers regarding her accomplishments that prompted her to launch the company, but rather the realization that her experiences were not isolated and that countless other women and minorities encountered similar challenges on a daily basis.

“I personally experienced workplace situations mirroring those faced by many other women and women of color, and I didn’t want my children to encounter the same difficulties,” Price explained. 

Consequently, alongside her husband, Bennie King, a seasoned entrepreneur in the Dallas region, and her classmate from both the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard, Star Carter, Price initiated Kanarys in late 2019.

The company utilizes Equal Employment Opportunity reports and evaluations of policies related to areas like advancement, hiring, and employee benefits to assess a company’s performance relative to its industry counterparts.

“Many of the inequalities we observe originate from structural and systemic issues. Kanarys is able to identify how these inequities are being perpetuated,” Price stated. 

Kanarys begins by conducting an independent review of a company’s policies and practices, then carries out quarterly employee surveys to gauge how effectively the company is achieving its stated goals. It also integrates with existing HR systems to monitor metrics such as pay parity and promotion rates.

This service has garnered interest from the Rise of the Rest fund, Morgan Stanley, Jigsaw Ventures, Segal Ventures, and Zeal Capital Partners, who spearheaded the company’s $3 million seed funding round.

“Historically, organizations have typically attempted to address these issues through isolated interventions,” Price noted. “Our approach emphasizes addressing the problem on multiple levels. A significant portion of the inequities we see are rooted in institutional and systemic policies and practices.”

Kanarys not only provides customers with data regarding their diversity and inclusion efforts, but also offers job seekers a database of approximately 1,000 companies, functioning similarly to Glassdoor. However, the focus extends beyond employee satisfaction to encompass employees’ perspectives on their employers’ diversity initiatives.

Significantly, the founders of Kanarys are joining the limited number of Black entrepreneurs who are launching businesses and securing venture capital. Data from 2017 indicated that 98% of venture capital funding in the U.S. was allocated to men, as reported by the company. Black entrepreneurs, in general, receive less than 1 % of venture capital, with Black women founders accounting for only 0.6% of the total venture capital funding. 

“We understand that prioritizing DEI in business is not only ethically sound for employees, but also a strategically advantageous business decision,” Price, CEO and co-founder of Kanarys, stated. “Kanarys’ DEI data empowers companies, for the first time, to make precise, timely, and well-informed decisions based on genuine, intersectional metrics related to their diversity objectives and inclusion programs, ultimately driving improved business results.”