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Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, two black women who painted until May 22 for Pinterest’s public policy and social influence team, filed accusations of racial discrimination and a hostile painting environment during their time at the company. The two spoke publicly about their reports for the first time via Twitter when, just days after leaving the company, Pinterest issued a solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
“Reading this was an insult. It was very dishonest,” recalls Ozoma, who first gave the lok on Pinterest in July 2018. Ozoma was the moment when a member of the Public Policy and Social Impact team. Prior to joining Pinterest, he worked at Google and Facebok’s public policy game station and earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale.
Ozoma says he first spoke of what he saw on the block in January 2019. “I expressed concern because I wasn’t paid enough according to Pinterest’s pay grade chart,” Ozoma said. He went on to say that Pinterest, like the big companies of other generations, uses pay point tables to calculate compensation. At the same time, Oracle was accused of paying women poorly and, in particular, women of color by leading them to minimize the titles in the pay table corresponding to what they deserved. “This is the scenario I learned and raised internal concerns with my manager, who lately is guilty of public policy and social influence on Pinterest, its manager, who is the legal provider presented for Pinterest and RR. Hh. Nowhere. I was fired immediately, ” said Ozoma. He added that while all this was happening, his own paintings got extensive external advice, leading to the largest press cycle of the apple to date.
To complicate matters, Pinterest allows team leaders to create pay tables for individual company teams. Ozoma, who claims she was hired to be an equivalent on the team, temporarily felt that this was not the case when she saw where she was indexed on the table. “For the person, guilty of public policy and social impact, our manager, write this down so that he, as a white man, is on top, and then brings two black women who are depressed, there is nothing just about it,” Ozoma insisted.
The banks, which joined Pinterest as a component of the similar public policy and social influence team when Ozoma first raised considerations about refund design, recalled a similar experience. She said she was promised a flat and collaborative team design to the hierarchical design of the salary design. Banks says that when he was hired, he was told that Ozoma was worried about getting the team’s paid design on the table as a kind of comfort. Later, he discovered that this was not the case after applying for the concept of a promotion, an application that was denied.
Prior to Pinterest, Banks painted on Google on patent policies and legal diversity and inclusion initiatives. Previously, he painted in the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration. Banks earned her master’s degree from Oxford University, was a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for social marketing professionals in 2018, and has publicly talked about racial equity disorders and women’s marketing. “I joined Pinterest with them knowing my circular background and directly dedicated to racial justice, racial equity, and they told me that during that direction Pinterest sought to go through what they specifically looked for me in paintings there,” Banks recalled, adding that he now wondered if that enthusiasm was sincere.
Just a month after Banks started, a white colleague who no longer paints on Pinterest leaked sensitive Apple documents. Banks recalls raising considerations about leaking information from painters, based on his wisdom beyond his paintings in Obama’s leadership and on Google. “I said we strengthened the safety of our colleagues and referred to me through the Deputy Advocate General. I was told there was no evidence of a leak of the painter’s information, so I’m not talking about it,” he said. Banks.
Only a day later, it will turn out that some important non-public things have, in fact, been revealed, adding ozoma’s. Both women said the company’s reaction was so slow that they turned to former Colleagues at Google and Facebok for help. “It was quite provocative to get him to leave six years of security and a wise song and an environment for the paintings here, where a scenario like this happens and no one knows how to look for it properly,” Banks said.
Two months later, Banks alleged that his manager had made derogatory statements about his ethnitown on a team tour. “We went to a team ramen workshop and there was a poster on the wall that said, “Did you know that ramen is from China? “, recalls Banks,” he knows I’m a black component, a Japanese component and said, “Hello Aerica, me and the deputy attorney general,” who, according to Banks, was another white director, “we were just laughing. how you and probably other Japanese would be angry with this sign, ” said Banks.
According to Banks, the verbal statement was followed by similar racial and ethnic statements, which led Banks to convene an assembly with huguy resources in the fall of 2019, where he asked his boy to achieve additional education on employee control. “It’s never irrational to expect you to achieve a control schooling, particularly a competent and friendly bodybuilding school, when you’re a white boy with two black women as direct subordinates,” he suggested. According to Banks, the head of diversity and inclusion on Pinterest told him that the company’s apple had deployed the required schooling for unimportant uncles. Banks also said he had won conflicting reports on whether this schooling was mandatory when he learned that his principal had not yet completed the course.
After sharing their stories, Ozoma and Banks claim that they have not listened to anyone on Pinterest in reaction to their messages, with the exception of a handful of former colleagues who have support messages shared by their best friends. When asked to comment, Pinterest did not go to Forbes, but presented the following to other media outlets that reported the story.
“We took these disorders seriously and conducted a thorough investigation when they were raised, and we are confident that any of the employees were treated fairly. We prefer that any member of our Pinterest staff feel welcome, appreciated and respected. As we emphasized in our June 2 Declaration, we are committed to advancing our paintings on inclusion and diversity through action in our business and on our platform. In spaces where we, as a company, fail, we have to do it and we could do better.”
Color of Change crusade manager Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, who worked with Ozoma and Banks on Pinterest decidedly directly to limit the marketing of plantation weddings on the platform, has issued a response. The press release reads: “Color Of Change has worked hard with Ifeoma and Aerica on their roles beyond limiting the marketing of marriages on Plantations on Pinterest and reviewing the company’s anti-bullying policies. We thank them for directing the company’s policies toward racial justice However, even claiming that “black lives matter,” Pinterest has ruled out Ifeoma and Aerica after making the plaque shape safer for black users.
Ogunnaike went directly to an official friend to apologize to Ozoma and the banks, offering them an economic refund and “this option to move their hostile culture to black works in order to establish a surplus for the generation industry.”
I’m a content editor and marketer with a penbing for exploring what it means to be a woguy in the workplace today. I love the way women are
I’m a content editor and marketer with a penbing for exploring what it means to be a woguy in the workplace today. I love to remember how women are represented in the workplace, what is being done to improve workplace culture for women who run, and how we may be able to focus more on ourselves during the 40 hours a week we spend at work. My writing has been published in Huffington Post and Cosmopolitan.com. Connect with me on Instagram and Twitter – erinspencer93