Emily Shugerman
Fri, November 19, 2021
Ashley Judd
The vast majority of Time’s Up’s remaining staffers were laid off Friday in what they described as a debacle that began with leaders revealing they gave the news to the Washington Post first and ended with board member Ashley Judd breaking down in tears.
The embattled organization, limping since its CEO and entire board resigned this summer, announced Friday that it would lay off the vast majority of its remaining staff. Leadership informed staff of the decision in a virtual meeting that started 15 minutes before the Post article made the pink slips national news.
“They said on the call, ‘The Washington Post is releasing a piece right now,’” said Stacey Ferguson, Time’s Up’s digital director. “Some staff members were like, ‘Oh my god, my mom is going to read about it before I can tell her.’”
“To paraphrase what a colleague shared on the call: For an organization that’s supposed to be advocating for fair and dignified workplaces, this feels like the opposite of that,” Ferguson added.
Insiders Say #MeToo Powerhouse Time’s Up Has Lost Its Way
In a statement, the board called the layoffs a “major reset” needed to right the ship after the events of the last year. Multiple outlets reported over the summer that the leaders of Time’s Up—which was created in response to the #MeToo movement—had counseled then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on how to respond to sexual harassment allegations against him and had disparaged his accuser in text messages.
Both CEO Tina Tchen and board chair Roberta Kaplan stepped down in August, naming former CFO Monifa Bandele the interim CEO and starting the process of hiring consultant Leilani Brown to conduct an independent review. Brown’s report, which was also released Friday, found a lack of discipline, loss of trust, and “outsized expectations without a stable foundation to grow on.”
In a statement announcing the layoffs and the results of the report, Board Chair Gabrielle Sulzberger called them “a needed reset, not a retreat.”
“TIME’S UP stands for accountability and systematic change in the workplace,” she said. “It is incumbent on us to learn from these findings, and focus on building an organization that powerfully serves women of all kinds and ends the impunity of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.”
Gabrielle Sulzberger
Staffers who spoke to The Daily Beast said they were confused why this “reset” required all of the on-the-ground staff to be laid off, while three of the organization’s highest-ranking members—its chief financial officer, chief development officer, and head of entertainment—would stay on in order to “rebuild.”
“Most of us weren’t in the leadership team when the Cuomo stuff happened, yet we’re the ones being punished for past actions of the organization,” said one employee, who asked to remain anonymous.
“Yet again, Time’s Up is putting the interests of the organization over its own staff members,” she added. “We’ve obviously become collateral damage in all of this.”
Staffers said they learned their fates in a 1 p.m. Zoom call led primarily by Sulzberger and fellow board member Judd. The two fielded questions about why the Washington Post had been told about the decision before staff members, and why employees would receive only two months’ severance during a global pandemic—something one staffer described to The Daily Beast as “a slap in the face.” (A Time’s Up spokesperson told The Daily Beast the severance package as “generous” for a small nonprofit.)
At one point, one staffer said, Judd began to cry, saying she was “broken-hearted” about the news.
“Mind you, she’s already put out a statement [to the Washington Post] with information that staff didn’t have access to,” the staffer said. “So keep your fucking crocodile tears.”
Revealed: Time’s Up Staffers Warned of Big Problems in Memo Long Before Implosion
The Time’s Up spokesperson told The Daily Beast that the organization decided to work with the Post because the paper had already obtained some details of the report, and they wanted to ensure the resulting article painted a full picture. He added that the layoffs were necessary to ensure that the organization’s work on behalf of survivors could continue, but declined to say when its programmatic work—which will be paused Jan. 1 when the current staffers depart—will resume.
The Daily Beast previously reported on the fractures within the organization, which launched to great fanfare in 2018. Staffers at the time described an organization that was more committed to its wealthy and powerful backers than it was to survivors, and that embraced a stifling, top-down leadership style. Employees claimed they had been forced to remove photos of Cuomo critics from their website and tweet laudatory things about his office’s work; others said they were forced to drop everything and launch a petition in support of Gayle King when the celebrity was being harassed online. One survivor whom the group had initially supported asked to remove her name from a Daily Beast article in April, after a Time’s Up executive lashed out at her for participating.
Tina Tchen resigned as CEO of Time’s Up earlier this year.
Ferguson, who has been with the organization a little over a year, said she stayed on staff despite these negative reports because she believed the organization could change. But even before the layoffs were announced, she said, she had already lost that hope.
“Imagine coming to work every day and wanting to do the right things—the good things—but you are prevented by the red tape, and the culture, and this weird, super heavy, top-down way of leading,” she said.
“The 25 people on staff are amazing, and the 12 people who resigned since I started a year ago are amazing, and that is the crying shame,” she added.
A fellow employee described Friday’s layoffs as a “failure” to the staff and the movement as a whole.
Asked what she would tell the organization’s leadership, she said: “I would make it very, very clear that they should be ashamed of themselves, that this is an embarrassment and a besmirchment of everything this movement is for. And I would love to know how they can sleep at night keeping their employees in the dark."
Embattled Time’s Up, post-Cuomo, announces a ‘major reset’
By JOCELYN NOVECK
By JOCELYN NOVECK
November 19, 2021
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Confusion over purpose and mission. Lack of focus on long-term goals. Ineffective communication internally and externally. Lack of accountability for top officials, especially the CEO. Too politically partisan, and too aligned with Hollywood.
These are just some of the issues raised in a report commissioned by Time’s Up and released Friday — in the name of transparency — as the advocacy group pledged a “major reset” including the termination of most of the staff. It comes three months after a damaging scandal forced the departure of chief executive Tina Tchen over revelations that the group’s leaders advised former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration after he was first accused of sexual harassment last year.
“We’re going down to the studs,” said Ashley Judd, one of the group’s most visible members and a key early voice in the broader #MeToo movement, in an interview.
“We’re going to rebuild and reset and come back in a way that honors our mandate, incorporates the voices of our critics, learns from our findings … and holds ourselves accountable but also lives up to our potential.”
Judd and Monifa Bandele, the interim leader since September, spoke to The Associated Press ahead of the report’s release, which coincides with a major staff upheaval. Most of the staff of 25 people were informed Friday they were being laid off at the end of the year, with a skeleton crew of three remaining. Four board members will stay on, including Judd, as the organization decides its next steps and chooses leadership. Bandele is stepping down.
Both women insisted that Time’s Up remains crucially important as an advocacy group for women. Bandele, who says she made the decision herself not to seek – for now – the permanent CEO role she had wanted, noted that “Even the people who are the toughest, toughest critics said, ‘We still need Time’s Up. Time’s Up is going to play a critical role in our movement. …. I didn’t see any ‘Burn it all down.’”
And Judd offered an emotional defense of the organization, saying she feels “as energized and committed today” as she did when Time’s Up launched in the wake of allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whom she herself had accused of sexual harassment. “The need for fair, safe, dignified workplaces for women of all kinds is still urgent.”
In explaining the group’s relevance, Judd told the anecdote of how a visiting producer on a movie she was doing came up to her and referred to a film they’d worked on years earlier. “I should have had you when I had the chance,” he declared, she said, in front of the entire crew and his wife. Judd did not identify the producer.
Judd said she knew she’d been harassed, and looked to the home page of SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, for help. “There was no help for me. And today, because of Time’s Up, on my union membership card there’s a sexual harassment hotline.”
“All of our norms have changed,” Judd added. “No more meetings in hotel rooms. No more meetings before and after standard work hours. Intimacy coordinators on set, and you can take a buddy with you to auditions for safety. Those are tremendous strides in our industry.”
Time’s Up was formed close to four years ago by a group of high-profile Hollywood women — producers, agents, movie stars — eager to build on the momentum from the Weinstein scandal and fight sexual harassment in their own industry and beyond.
The group pledged to be a voice for women from all walks of life, but it has been plagued by criticism — from outside, and also from within — that it was too aligned with Hollywood and less attentive to the needs of others. When Bandele took over interim leadership, she pledged the group would ask itself: “What are our conflicts of interests, what are our guardrails?”
The release of the report, written by independent consultant Leilani M. Brown and first reported by The Washington Post, forms the first phase of the group’s reset; the next phase, Bandele said, is strategic planning, and a final phase will be implementation. The report was compiled over a period of two months; Some 200 people, including current and former staffers and stakeholders, were contacted and 85 agreed to interviews.
“This is a needed reset, not a retreat,” said board chair Gabrielle Sulzberger, in a statement. “It is incumbent on us to learn from these findings, and focus on building an organization that powerfully serves women of all kinds and ends the impunity of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.”
Already, Bandele said, the report “has been successful in that we have really demonstrated transparency and openness in a way that’s vulnerable. And so it feels good. At the same time, it’s bittersweet.”
Among the findings:
—There was internal confusion about purpose and mission, which was “largely undefined for some time.” Partly this was because the organization developed too fast, the report said, ramping up ‘like a jet plane to a rocket ship’ overnight.“
—Leaders were seen as often chasing short-term goals rather than a longer-term strategic vision.
—Communication was “inconsistent and fragmented.” Some members were frustrated to hear of the allegations involving the Cuomo case from the media and not from Time’s Up itself. ( Tchen’s Aug. 26 resignation followed the earlier departure of the organization’s chair, Roberta Kaplan. Both women had angered Time’s Up supporters with the idea they’d offered any help to Cuomo, and that Tchen initially discouraged other Time’s Up leaders from commenting publicly on allegations by one of his accusers, Lindsey Boylan. Cuomo resigned on Aug. 10 amid a barrage of harassment allegations.)
—The group appeared politically partisan. The report cited members who felt Time’s Up was damaged by leaders’ ties to the Democratic Party (Tchen was once Michelle Obama’s chief of staff). The organization was accused by some of not supporting Tara Reade, who accused now-President Joe Biden of assaulting her in the 1990s — an allegation he has vehemently denied. And the Cuomo ties led to criticism that the group’s dealings with the governor smacked of political favoritism.
Bandele said in the interview that the Cuomo episode might have landed differently if the group’s structure were more sound. “The Cuomo crisis was key in where we are now,” Bandele said. “But if the inside structure … was stronger, if the communications and the transparency in the processes were stronger, something like what happened with Cuomo would be (less) likely to happen. Even if it did, “it wouldn’t have the same detrimental effect on how people view the organization because we’d have much greater trust within the community.”
The question now is how the group will rebuild that trust.
“All organizations make mistakes,” Bandele argued. “So we’ll make mistakes, too. But it’s not a nail in the coffin … this is not the end of us. The thing is that we have to build back stronger.”
The group did not provide a timeline for its next steps. Judd said it would be worth the wait.
“What we are going to manifest is an organization that has singleness of purpose and will be inclusive, and amplify the voices of women of all kinds,” she said. “We’re very excited to be able to share it with the world.”
As for herself, she said, “I’m still here because I know the urgency of how much society needs Time’s Up. The mandate is bigger and more important than the mistakes we made. And we will persevere and be of service.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Confusion over purpose and mission. Lack of focus on long-term goals. Ineffective communication internally and externally. Lack of accountability for top officials, especially the CEO. Too politically partisan, and too aligned with Hollywood.
These are just some of the issues raised in a report commissioned by Time’s Up and released Friday — in the name of transparency — as the advocacy group pledged a “major reset” including the termination of most of the staff. It comes three months after a damaging scandal forced the departure of chief executive Tina Tchen over revelations that the group’s leaders advised former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration after he was first accused of sexual harassment last year.
“We’re going down to the studs,” said Ashley Judd, one of the group’s most visible members and a key early voice in the broader #MeToo movement, in an interview.
“We’re going to rebuild and reset and come back in a way that honors our mandate, incorporates the voices of our critics, learns from our findings … and holds ourselves accountable but also lives up to our potential.”
Judd and Monifa Bandele, the interim leader since September, spoke to The Associated Press ahead of the report’s release, which coincides with a major staff upheaval. Most of the staff of 25 people were informed Friday they were being laid off at the end of the year, with a skeleton crew of three remaining. Four board members will stay on, including Judd, as the organization decides its next steps and chooses leadership. Bandele is stepping down.
Both women insisted that Time’s Up remains crucially important as an advocacy group for women. Bandele, who says she made the decision herself not to seek – for now – the permanent CEO role she had wanted, noted that “Even the people who are the toughest, toughest critics said, ‘We still need Time’s Up. Time’s Up is going to play a critical role in our movement. …. I didn’t see any ‘Burn it all down.’”
And Judd offered an emotional defense of the organization, saying she feels “as energized and committed today” as she did when Time’s Up launched in the wake of allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whom she herself had accused of sexual harassment. “The need for fair, safe, dignified workplaces for women of all kinds is still urgent.”
In explaining the group’s relevance, Judd told the anecdote of how a visiting producer on a movie she was doing came up to her and referred to a film they’d worked on years earlier. “I should have had you when I had the chance,” he declared, she said, in front of the entire crew and his wife. Judd did not identify the producer.
Judd said she knew she’d been harassed, and looked to the home page of SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, for help. “There was no help for me. And today, because of Time’s Up, on my union membership card there’s a sexual harassment hotline.”
“All of our norms have changed,” Judd added. “No more meetings in hotel rooms. No more meetings before and after standard work hours. Intimacy coordinators on set, and you can take a buddy with you to auditions for safety. Those are tremendous strides in our industry.”
Time’s Up was formed close to four years ago by a group of high-profile Hollywood women — producers, agents, movie stars — eager to build on the momentum from the Weinstein scandal and fight sexual harassment in their own industry and beyond.
The group pledged to be a voice for women from all walks of life, but it has been plagued by criticism — from outside, and also from within — that it was too aligned with Hollywood and less attentive to the needs of others. When Bandele took over interim leadership, she pledged the group would ask itself: “What are our conflicts of interests, what are our guardrails?”
The release of the report, written by independent consultant Leilani M. Brown and first reported by The Washington Post, forms the first phase of the group’s reset; the next phase, Bandele said, is strategic planning, and a final phase will be implementation. The report was compiled over a period of two months; Some 200 people, including current and former staffers and stakeholders, were contacted and 85 agreed to interviews.
“This is a needed reset, not a retreat,” said board chair Gabrielle Sulzberger, in a statement. “It is incumbent on us to learn from these findings, and focus on building an organization that powerfully serves women of all kinds and ends the impunity of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.”
Already, Bandele said, the report “has been successful in that we have really demonstrated transparency and openness in a way that’s vulnerable. And so it feels good. At the same time, it’s bittersweet.”
Among the findings:
—There was internal confusion about purpose and mission, which was “largely undefined for some time.” Partly this was because the organization developed too fast, the report said, ramping up ‘like a jet plane to a rocket ship’ overnight.“
—Leaders were seen as often chasing short-term goals rather than a longer-term strategic vision.
—Communication was “inconsistent and fragmented.” Some members were frustrated to hear of the allegations involving the Cuomo case from the media and not from Time’s Up itself. ( Tchen’s Aug. 26 resignation followed the earlier departure of the organization’s chair, Roberta Kaplan. Both women had angered Time’s Up supporters with the idea they’d offered any help to Cuomo, and that Tchen initially discouraged other Time’s Up leaders from commenting publicly on allegations by one of his accusers, Lindsey Boylan. Cuomo resigned on Aug. 10 amid a barrage of harassment allegations.)
—The group appeared politically partisan. The report cited members who felt Time’s Up was damaged by leaders’ ties to the Democratic Party (Tchen was once Michelle Obama’s chief of staff). The organization was accused by some of not supporting Tara Reade, who accused now-President Joe Biden of assaulting her in the 1990s — an allegation he has vehemently denied. And the Cuomo ties led to criticism that the group’s dealings with the governor smacked of political favoritism.
Bandele said in the interview that the Cuomo episode might have landed differently if the group’s structure were more sound. “The Cuomo crisis was key in where we are now,” Bandele said. “But if the inside structure … was stronger, if the communications and the transparency in the processes were stronger, something like what happened with Cuomo would be (less) likely to happen. Even if it did, “it wouldn’t have the same detrimental effect on how people view the organization because we’d have much greater trust within the community.”
The question now is how the group will rebuild that trust.
“All organizations make mistakes,” Bandele argued. “So we’ll make mistakes, too. But it’s not a nail in the coffin … this is not the end of us. The thing is that we have to build back stronger.”
The group did not provide a timeline for its next steps. Judd said it would be worth the wait.
“What we are going to manifest is an organization that has singleness of purpose and will be inclusive, and amplify the voices of women of all kinds,” she said. “We’re very excited to be able to share it with the world.”
As for herself, she said, “I’m still here because I know the urgency of how much society needs Time’s Up. The mandate is bigger and more important than the mistakes we made. And we will persevere and be of service.”
