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The story of how Shanti Stanton and Steve Elmendorf shaped a decades-long work partnership is a traditional Washington story.
It began on Capitol Hill in 1995: Stanton was a latest faculty grad and Elmendorf was a high aide to Richard Gephardt, then the Democratic chief within the Home. Elmendorf introduced her on board and served as her boss and mentor.
Then it moved to Okay Avenue: When Elmendorf opened his personal lobbying store in 2007, Stanton grew to become one in every of his early hires. She labored for him for greater than 15 years.
Final yr, nevertheless, their skilled relationship imploded when Stanton and one other feminine senior government have been abruptly fired in what they have been informed was a cost-cutting transfer. Stanton and her colleague, Audrey Chang, ready to sue the agency for gender discrimination and a hostile work setting, amongst different accusations.
The 2 ladies claimed they’d been terminated regardless of being high performers on the agency, then known as Topic Matter. The agency declined to touch upon its reasoning for the dismissals.
In a draft criticism, they alleged a litany of unhealthy habits. Elmendorf, a distinguished lobbyist and Democratic donor, and Paul Frick, one other one of many agency’s founding companions, have been named as defendants within the draft lawsuit.
“As one of many first staff of Topic Matter, I watched the agency develop rapidly, making tens of tens of millions [of dollars] by advertising their entry to senior feminine and progressive leaders,” Stanton mentioned in an announcement to POLITICO previous to settling with the agency. “But, ladies at Topic Matter have been by no means made or seen as companions on this journey. In contrast, there was widespread discrimination in a boys’ membership tradition that intimidated and discarded us.”
In her personal assertion earlier than the settlement, Chang mentioned: “I’ve labored at various public relations and public affairs companies in D.C. over the course of 30 years — with many white male leaders — nevertheless it wasn’t till I acquired to Topic Matter that I noticed first-hand, and was subjected to, constant, high to backside disdain and lack of respect for ladies, our voices and our contributions.”
Though the 2 sides settled earlier than a lawsuit was filed, the scenario has put a agency that helps big-name shoppers handle their reputations and advocate for his or her causes within the uncomfortable place of getting to defend its personal actions.
The conflict is a uncommon occasion of feminine executives taking up the alleged misconduct of their former employers, and it may sign a cultural shift within the male-dominated world of Washington lobbying. Following her departure, Stanton mentioned that roughly two dozen ladies detailed to her their “equally distressing experiences” on the agency, prompting her to talk out.
Nonetheless, all however a couple of former staff of the agency have been granted anonymity to talk for this story, fearing retaliation.
A lawsuit menace, then a settlement
POLITICO obtained the 46-page draft lawsuit earlier than final yr’s settlement, the phrases of which weren’t disclosed. Although not all the draft’s claims may very well be corroborated, interviews with about three dozen former staff of the agency present that Stanton and Chang weren’t alone of their experiences. Twenty-eight of the previous staff reported experiencing or witnessing some sexist remedy whereas on the agency.
Among the many complaints from the departed staff: receiving undesirable feedback about their look, being berated or yelled at by their bosses, having their concepts shut down, and seeing credit score for his or her work taken by males. Some males have been advocates for ladies, however many others “failed upward,” within the phrases of a number of former staff.
CEO Nicole Cornish mentioned in an announcement that the overarching allegation made by former staff that Topic Matter was a poor office for ladies is “inconsistent with the info of who we’re and the agency we’ve constructed.”
“Since 2018, 80 % of all promotions on the agency have been ladies,” she mentioned. “Our chief government officer, chief working officer, head of expertise, 40 % of our companions and 52 % of the senior management crew, are all ladies. We could also be male based, however we’re feminine led.”
Cornish added in an interview that staff who really feel they don’t have a path for development, or that their concepts will not be taken significantly, “are very actual issues.”
However she mentioned that have shouldn’t be unique to ladies. “I’m not making an attempt to recommend that each single individual goes to stroll away from Topic Matter having a constructive expertise,” she mentioned. “I’m merely suggesting that that’s not particular to gender.”
The agency declined to reply different questions for this story.
Topic Matter, which rebranded to Avoq in January, is a one-stop-shop for shoppers in want of advocacy, promoting, public relations and occasion companies. It’s change into a significant participant in D.C.’s lobbying and PR world, counting blue-chip corporations together with Amazon, Boeing, Meta and Pfizer as its shoppers.
In 2022, non-public fairness agency Coral Tree Companions acquired a portion of the agency, and Topic Matter merged with public affairs agency Kivvit final Might. The mixed agency, Avoq, has practically $100 million in shopper charges, in response to the business publication PRovoke Media.
Though Cornish grew to become Topic Matter’s COO in 2017 and CEO in 2021, the agency has been largely managed by the 4 male companions. In January, Avoq promoted 14 folks to accomplice, together with six ladies.
A breaking level
A majority of ladies who spoke with POLITICO mentioned the agency’s male leaders have had disproportionate sway and decision-making energy, in comparison with ladies at senior ranges. One of many males is co-founder Frick, who was regularly named in each the draft lawsuit and the interviews for allegedly mistreating ladies.
One former worker recalled that Frick belittled her feminine boss throughout a presentation for a potential shopper. That worker, Annie Plotkin, mentioned Frick had pitched the potential shopper on a public affairs marketing campaign. However the knowledge she and the top of the digital crew, Hastie Afkhami, performed didn’t help the narrative he’d offered the shopper.
Even after Plotkin and Afkhami tried to make the analysis match what Frick wished, Plotkin mentioned, Frick “known as [Afkhami] out in entrance of the shopper,” claiming the information was incorrect.
“I knew that she wasn’t flawed as a result of I had labored on the fabric that she was speaking about,” Plotkin mentioned of Afkhami. “I learn it as a breaking level of their relationship as a result of she left fairly quickly after that. It undoubtedly turned me off to Paul and dealing there — that didn’t really feel good.”
“What I skilled” on the agency, Plotkin added, “is seeing account managers who’re ladies who’re breaking their backs and being usually reprimanded by Paul. There have been males in additional senior positions that have been celebrated and prioritized and brought extra significantly, even when it didn’t seem to me that they have been working wherever close to as exhausting.”
Afkhami confirmed the anecdote however declined to remark additional.
“The second Paul had an opinion about you, it by no means modified,” a second former worker mentioned of Frick. “So when you tousled on one factor, that was your scarlet letter for the remainder of your life there. When you tousled one time, you usually tend to be robotically dismissed for any subsequent factor, even when it’s not even associated.”
Frick didn’t reply to a request for remark.
‘So that they wouldn’t see me cry’
Within the fall of 2019, Topic Matter performed a “tradition evaluation” that measured how staff felt about working on the agency.
In keeping with a slide deck of the outcomes obtained by POLITICO, solely 9 % of ladies described themselves as “promoters” of the agency. Practically half the ladies who responded have been “detractors” and the rest known as themselves “passive.” Males on the agency have been roughly equally cut up between being promoters, detractors and passive.
A 3rd former worker mentioned that subsequent surveys have been extra rare and obscure of their wording about employee sentiment, making year-to-year comparisons troublesome.
The overwhelming majority of complaints POLITICO heard from ex-employees have been from individuals who had expertise with Topic Matter’s communications facet, run by Frick and Dan Sallick, who didn’t reply to a request for remark.
One former employee who had a largely constructive expertise at Topic Matter nonetheless mentioned she observed a disparity in how women and men have been handled. Males got a number of probabilities to succeed: In the event that they didn’t work out on a selected shopper, they’d be moved round to a different alternative. Girls, in her expertise, weren’t afforded such second probabilities.
Greater than a dozen folks recounted that males on the general public affairs facet of the agency have been routinely given extra alternatives to advance than their feminine counterparts — whereas ladies shouldered a lot of the work.
“The vast majority of entry-level staff are younger ladies. To construct a agency on the labor and creativity and concepts of younger ladies who then don’t see a transparent path for themselves at that agency, to then finally prop up the 4 white male companions — that’s what stood out to me most as an unlucky tradition,” one of many former staff mentioned.
Three different former staff mentioned it wasn’t unusual to see feminine colleagues crying within the workplace. One in all them mentioned she would see folks go into companions’ places of work and “would see them depart in tears … it simply wasn’t a superb scenario.”
In a single worker’s ultimate evaluation earlier than she left the agency a number of years in the past, she was informed by Frick that she was “too vanilla” and that “we’ve purchaser’s regret from hiring you,” in response to two contemporaneous textual content messages she despatched to a colleague and a buddy. “I ran out of the room as fast as I may in order that they wouldn’t see me cry,” the individual mentioned in one of many texts.
This former Topic Matter worker mentioned her lawyer obtained three calls from a lawyer for Avoq in mid-April telling her that the agency knew she was chatting with POLITICO to offer unflattering details about the agency, outreach that she seen as intimidation.
Chang, within the draft lawsuit, mentioned that males in management would push concepts throughout conferences “no matter whether or not they have been on observe strategically, helped advance targets, or have been real looking inside shopper parameters.”
As an example, Kevin Richards, the agency’s chief artistic officer, was “usually dismissive of ladies’s experience, concepts, questions, and contributions,” Chang asserted.
Plotkin described Richards as “a giant concepts man” who would “sit on the desk and put his palms behind his head” to speak about how issues needs to be accomplished. “In the meantime, the feminine account managers are sitting there making an attempt to consider how that’s going to realistically be executed.”
Richards, who was amongst these promoted to accomplice earlier this yr, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
‘I trusted you and that is what you do?’
Stanton and Chang wrote of their draft declare that they have been terminated regardless of being among the many agency’s high performers.
Stanton alleged that Topic Matter dealt with her firing in a method that disadvantaged her of fairness, compensation and bonuses she had been promised.
She additionally mentioned Elmendorf pulled a bait and swap, first by convincing her to unload her shares in Topic Matter amid an funding by non-public fairness agency Coral Tree Companions, with the reassurance that she would get fairness within the new agency.
In pressuring her to signal the acquisition settlement, Stanton claimed Elmendorf mentioned the deal would fall by means of if she didn’t, including: “We’re all going to make some huge cash. Please simply signal them. We’ve to get this deal by means of earlier than Nancy Pelosi isn’t Speaker anymore…”
After she signed the doc, Elmendorf made repeated mentions of her future on the agency, she mentioned, together with saying he would discover methods for her to earn more cash.
Nonetheless, Stanton mentioned the temper shifted in January 2023, shortly after she had renewed all her shopper contracts. In March, she was known as into a gathering and notified she was being let go, following “strain” from the non-public fairness agency to scale back prices.
She was the one individual terminated from the federal government affairs facet of the agency, regardless of her constructive efficiency critiques and lengthy tenure. “You informed me all the things was going to be OK,” she mentioned when she confronted Elmendorf, per the draft lawsuit. “I trusted you and that is what you do?”
Within the draft declare, she mentioned Elmendorf responded “underneath his breath” that there had been a “draw out clause” within the buy settlement she’d signed. Stanton was given 9 days’ discover earlier than she needed to depart the agency on March 31.
Elmendorf didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A title bump rebuffed
Chang had a shorter however nonetheless substantial historical past on the agency. She joined Topic Matter in 2018 to launch its strategic communications apply, given the title of senior vp.
Within the draft criticism, she mentioned that she started elevating the problem of an absence of gender and racial variety even earlier than she was employed — stating that the 4 companions working the agency have been males and a lot of the different senior management was additionally male. Chang, who’s Asian American, additionally alleged within the criticism that the agency engaged in racially discriminatory habits.
Although she claimed that she didn’t obtain a efficiency evaluation till three years into the job, she mentioned Frick, her boss, gave her excessive marks. Her crew received a number of awards for his or her work, together with one for a marketing campaign created for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
However when she requested for a title bump to government vp in her 2021 and 2022 efficiency critiques to replicate the extent of labor she was doing — and produce her according to male colleagues — she was rebuffed. Chang was informed to attend till the transaction with Coral Tree Companions had been accomplished, although at the least one different man was promoted to government vp throughout this time, she mentioned.
In Might 2023, Chang believed that Topic Matter had come to view her as an ally of Stanton and a possible witness to her preliminary allegations of discrimination.
The next month, Chang and her total crew — one of the crucial various on the agency — have been laid off. It got here days after she’d identified an absence of variety on a name with Topic Matter and Kivvit leaders, and never lengthy after Stanton despatched her demand letter to the agency.
A number of former staff informed POLITICO they have been assured their jobs can be protected following the merger with Kivvit. The crew had solely been given every week’s discover earlier than they have been out of a job, they mentioned.
Some constructive marks
4 of the ladies POLITICO contacted for this story disputed that Topic Matter was a poor place for ladies to work.
Being a lady didn’t pose any issues for them to succeed on the agency, they mentioned. One who was on an all-women crew mentioned she had an excellent expertise at Topic Matter. One other mentioned that she didn’t observe ladies being handled in a different way within the workplace, whereas a 3rd mentioned she left as a result of she didn’t wish to work at an company, not due to any discrimination primarily based on her gender.
“My brief time (3 years) there was nothing however constructive,” Lisa Cullen, who labored for Topic Matter and a predecessor agency as an account supervisor from 2014 to 2016, mentioned in a textual content message. “The corporate at all times seemed for methods to develop me professionally. I at all times felt supported by Dan [Sallick] and Paul [Frick], who I’ve identified for greater than 20 years.”
However the predominant sentiment amongst former feminine staff who spoke to POLITICO — and some males as properly — went within the different path.
“In the sort of work setting, it’s simpler to attempt to keep away from the unhealthy actors, look the opposite method and preserve the blinders on, however that’s how this mistreatment is allowed to proceed,” Chang mentioned earlier than the settlement. “There may be large strain to remain silent. However I additionally know that it’s not simply me, that there are dozens of proficient ladies who’ve been pushed out of Topic Matter.”
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