Whitey Ford
03-15-2021, 04:39 PM
30 current and former Mailchimp employees detail the conditions that led to a 'mass exodus' of women and people of color
https://i.imgur.com/VkQiFMW.jpg
Since the start of 2020, Mailchimp has lost two female C-level executives, one female Chief Information Security Officer, one female vice president, and at least eight women or people of color at the director or senior director level.
Chestnut said he was "interested" in how these departures would impact Mailchimp's diversity, and thanked its employee resource groups for "raising this concern," but said higher attrition rates are "normal and expected for a high-growth company" like Mailchimp and that "there's nothing going on behind the scenes that you should worry about."
But Chestnut had apparently failed to mention possibly the biggest elephant in the room, which would soon spark a lot of worry among employees: Shareka Nelson, Mailchimp's first director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, would be leaving the company within a week, despite being hired barely a year earlier.
Nelson, a Black woman, came to Mailchimp from Facebook, where she worked on similar initiatives. The initial impression, a former employee said, was that Mailchimp had hired her to "do real DEI work, not just be a mouthpiece." Nelson was genuinely committed to making Mailchimp more inclusive and equitable: she dug into pay data, asked executives to read books on racial justice, and held DEI meetings open to the whole company, current and former employees said.
https://archive.is/1fcO4#selection-2691.89-2699.310
https://i.imgur.com/VkQiFMW.jpg
Since the start of 2020, Mailchimp has lost two female C-level executives, one female Chief Information Security Officer, one female vice president, and at least eight women or people of color at the director or senior director level.
Chestnut said he was "interested" in how these departures would impact Mailchimp's diversity, and thanked its employee resource groups for "raising this concern," but said higher attrition rates are "normal and expected for a high-growth company" like Mailchimp and that "there's nothing going on behind the scenes that you should worry about."
But Chestnut had apparently failed to mention possibly the biggest elephant in the room, which would soon spark a lot of worry among employees: Shareka Nelson, Mailchimp's first director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, would be leaving the company within a week, despite being hired barely a year earlier.
Nelson, a Black woman, came to Mailchimp from Facebook, where she worked on similar initiatives. The initial impression, a former employee said, was that Mailchimp had hired her to "do real DEI work, not just be a mouthpiece." Nelson was genuinely committed to making Mailchimp more inclusive and equitable: she dug into pay data, asked executives to read books on racial justice, and held DEI meetings open to the whole company, current and former employees said.
https://archive.is/1fcO4#selection-2691.89-2699.310