From unhoused to the C-suite: Anthony Moisant’s journey to Indeed

For some lucky people, their career is also a mission—for Anthony Moisant, Indeed CIO and CSO, his path began as a young person experiencing homelessness and a high school dropout in Chicago.

His nontraditional journey gave Moisant a perspective on the need for community—and for opening doors.

“Coming out of Yale, coming out of Princeton, coming out of Harvard and Stanford, you have some opportunities that are just green lights for you,” Moisant told IT Brew. “When you’re underprivileged, when you’re a dropout, and you don’t have those green lights, you’ve got to work really, really hard—it’s imperative that people help you and open the doors.”

Forward path. Moisant joined the Navy in 1993, a decision that he said saved him from going down a bad path. An early interest in computing gave him a leg up and offered a different future.

“I had taught myself how to code early on when I was 11 years old, so I was very adept from a technology perspective—and when I joined the military, not a lot of people were,” Moisant said. “It was one of these things where I had just a tremendous amount of opportunity simply because I had fluency over technology.”

After finishing his service in 1999, Moisant headed to Silicon Valley, landing at a startup, Versata, that he helped take public. From there, he spent eight years at Sony Gracenote, ending as VP of IT. Stints at Tribune Media, where he was VP of digital and data, and Glassdoor followed.

Doors, open. At Glassdoor, where he worked for just over seven and a half years, Moisant found a new purpose. He had expected to retire, but the opportunity to work in IT for a company that matches people to the place they’ll build careers was appealing, he said.

“That tugged on this thing from back when I was homeless, which was that I love opening doors for people—how do you create opportunity for people?” Moisant said. “Once I got into Glassdoor, I realized what an incredible societal impact that could be, and the same thing with Indeed.”

Recruit Holdings owns both Glassdoor and Indeed, so his move was a lateral one. At Indeed, he sees his mission as continuing.

“It’s sort of imperative that people help you and open the doors,” Moisant told IT Brew. “And I was lucky and blessed to have people do that for me.”