The story of how Shanti Stanton and Steve Elmendorf fashioned a decades-long work partnership is a traditional Washington story.
It began on Capitol Hill in 1995: Stanton was a current faculty grad and Elmendorf was a prime 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 Ok Road: When Elmendorf opened his personal lobbying store in 2007, Stanton grew to become one among his early hires. She labored for him for greater than 15 years.
Final 12 months, nevertheless, their skilled relationship imploded when Stanton and one other feminine senior govt have been abruptly fired in what they have been instructed 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 prime performers on the agency, then known as Topic Matter. The agency declined to touch upon its reasoning for the dismissals.
In a draft grievance, they alleged a litany of unhealthy conduct. Elmendorf, a outstanding 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 the first employees of Subject Matter, I watched the firm grow quickly, making tens of millions [of dollars] by marketing their access to senior female and progressive leaders,” Stanton stated in an announcement to POLITICO previous to settling with the agency. “Yet, women at Subject Matter were never made or viewed as partners in this journey. By contrast, there was widespread discrimination in a boys’ club culture that intimidated and discarded us.”
In her personal assertion earlier than the settlement, Chang stated: “I’ve worked at a number of public relations and public affairs firms in D.C. over the course of 30 years — with many white male leaders — but it wasn’t until I got to Subject Matter that I saw first-hand, and was subjected to, consistent, top to bottom disdain and lack of respect for women, 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 purchasers 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 over 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 stated that roughly two dozen ladies detailed to her their “similarly distressing experiences” on the agency, prompting her to talk out.
Nonetheless, all however a couple of former workers of the agency have been granted anonymity to talk for this story, fearing retaliation.
A lawsuit risk, then a settlement
POLITICO obtained the 46-page draft lawsuit earlier than final 12 months’s settlement, the phrases of which weren’t disclosed. Although not the entire draft’s claims may very well be corroborated, interviews with about three dozen former workers of the agency present that Stanton and Chang weren’t alone of their experiences. Twenty-eight of the previous workers reported experiencing or witnessing some sexist therapy whereas on the agency.
Among the many complaints from the departed workers: 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 workers.
CEO Nicole Cornish stated in an announcement that the overarching allegation made by former workers that Topic Matter was a poor office for ladies is “inconsistent with the facts of who we are and the firm we have built.”
“Since 2018, 80 percent of all promotions at the firm have been women,” she stated. “Our chief executive officer, chief operating officer, head of talent, 40 percent of our partners and 52 percent of the senior leadership team, are all women. We may be male founded, but we are female led.”
Cornish added in an interview that workers who really feel they don’t have a path for development, or that their concepts usually are not taken critically, “are very real things.”
However she stated that have will not be unique to ladies. “I’m not trying to suggest that every single person is going to walk away from Subject Matter having a positive experience,” she stated. “I’m simply suggesting that that’s not specific 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 purchasers in want of advocacy, promoting, public relations and occasion providers. It’s develop 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 purchasers.
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 Could. The mixed agency, Avoq, has practically $100 million in consumer charges, in accordance with the trade 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 individuals to accomplice, together with six ladies.
A breaking level
A majority of girls who spoke with POLITICO stated 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 often 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 consumer. That worker, Annie Plotkin, stated Frick had pitched the potential consumer on a public affairs marketing campaign. However the knowledge she and the pinnacle of the digital staff, Hastie Afkhami, carried out didn’t help the narrative he’d bought the consumer.
Even after Plotkin and Afkhami tried to make the analysis match what Frick wished, Plotkin stated, Frick “called [Afkhami] out in front of the client,” claiming the info was incorrect.
“I knew that she wasn’t wrong because I had worked on the material that she was talking about,” Plotkin stated of Afkhami. “I read it as a breaking point in their relationship because she left pretty soon after that. It definitely turned me off to Paul and working there — that did not feel good.”
“What I experienced” on the agency, Plotkin added, “is seeing account managers who are women who are breaking their backs and being regularly reprimanded by Paul. There were men in more senior positions that were celebrated and prioritized and taken more seriously, even when it did not appear to me that they were working anywhere near as hard.”
Afkhami confirmed the anecdote however declined to remark additional.
“The second Paul had an opinion about you, it never changed,” a second former worker stated of Frick. “So if you messed up on one thing, that was your scarlet letter for the rest of your life there. If you messed up one time, you are more likely to be automatically dismissed for any subsequent thing, even if it’s not even related.”
Frick didn’t reply to a request for remark.
‘So they wouldn’t see me cry’
Within the fall of 2019, Topic Matter carried out a “culture assessment” that measured how workers felt about working on the agency.
In accordance with a slide deck of the outcomes obtained by POLITICO, solely 9 % of girls 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 stated 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 aspect, run by Frick and Dan Sallick, who didn’t reply to a request for remark.
One former employee who had a principally constructive expertise at Topic Matter nonetheless stated she observed a disparity in how women and men have been handled. Males got a number of possibilities to succeed: In the event that they didn’t work out on a selected consumer, they might be moved round to a different alternative. Ladies, in her expertise, weren’t afforded such second possibilities.
Greater than a dozen individuals recounted that males on the general public affairs aspect of the agency have been routinely given extra alternatives to advance than their feminine counterparts — whereas ladies shouldered a lot of the work.
“The majority of entry-level employees are young women. To build a firm on the labor and creativity and ideas of young women who then don’t see a clear path for themselves at that firm, to then ultimately prop up the four white male partners — that is what stood out to me most as an unfortunate culture,” one of many former workers stated.
Three different former workers stated it wasn’t unusual to see feminine colleagues crying within the workplace. Certainly one of them stated she would see individuals go into companions’ places of work and “would see them leave in tears … it just wasn’t a good situation.”
In a single worker’s ultimate evaluate earlier than she left the agency a number of years in the past, she was instructed by Frick that she was “too vanilla” and that “we have buyer’s remorse from hiring you,” in accordance with two contemporaneous textual content messages she despatched to a colleague and a good friend. “I ran out of the room as quick as I could so that they wouldn’t see me cry,” the particular person stated in one of many texts.
This former Topic Matter worker stated 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, stated that males in management would push concepts throughout conferences “regardless of whether they were on track strategically, helped advance goals, or were realistic within client parameters.”
As an example, Kevin Richards, the agency’s chief inventive officer, was “often dismissive of women’s expertise, ideas, questions, and contributions,” Chang asserted.
Plotkin described Richards as “a big ideas guy” who would “sit at the table and put his hands behind his head” to speak about how issues needs to be accomplished. “Meanwhile, the female account managers are sitting there trying to think about how that is going to realistically be executed.”
Richards, who was amongst these promoted to accomplice earlier this 12 months, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
‘I trusted you and this 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 prime performers.
Stanton alleged that Topic Matter dealt with her firing in a approach that disadvantaged her of fairness, compensation and bonuses she had been promised.
She additionally stated Elmendorf pulled a bait and change, first by convincing her to dump her shares in Topic Matter amid an funding by non-public fairness agency Coral Tree Companions, with the peace of mind that she would get fairness within the new agency.
In pressuring her to signal the acquisition settlement, Stanton claimed Elmendorf stated the deal would fall via if she didn’t, including: “We’re all going to make a lot of money. Please just sign them. We have to get this deal through before Nancy Pelosi isn’t Speaker anymore…”
After she signed the doc, Elmendorf made repeated mentions of her future on the agency, she stated, together with saying he would discover methods for her to earn extra money.
Nevertheless, Stanton stated the temper shifted in January 2023, shortly after she had renewed all her consumer contracts. In March, she was known as into a gathering and notified she was being let go, following “pressure” from the non-public fairness agency to cut back prices.
She was the one particular person terminated from the federal government affairs aspect of the agency, regardless of her constructive efficiency opinions and lengthy tenure. “You told me everything was going to be OK,” she stated when she confronted Elmendorf, per the draft lawsuit. “I trusted you and this is what you do?”
Within the draft declare, she stated Elmendorf responded “under 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 observe, given the title of senior vp.
Within the draft grievance, she stated that she started elevating the problem of a scarcity of gender and racial variety even earlier than she was employed — stating that the 4 companions operating 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 grievance that the agency engaged in racially discriminatory conduct.
Although she claimed that she didn’t obtain a efficiency evaluate till three years into the job, she stated Frick, her boss, gave her excessive marks. Her staff 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 govt vp in her 2021 and 2022 efficiency opinions to mirror the extent of labor she was doing — and produce her consistent with male colleagues — she was rebuffed. Chang was instructed to attend till the transaction with Coral Tree Companions had been accomplished, although at the very least one different man was promoted to govt vp throughout this time, she stated.
In Could 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 whole staff — probably the most numerous on the agency — have been laid off. It got here days after she’d identified a scarcity 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 workers instructed POLITICO they have been assured their jobs can be protected following the merger with Kivvit. The staff had solely been given per week’s discover earlier than they have been out of a job, they stated.
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 stated. One who was on an all-women staff stated she had an excellent expertise at Topic Matter. One other stated that she didn’t observe ladies being handled otherwise within the workplace, whereas a 3rd stated she left as a result of she didn’t need to work at an company, not due to any discrimination primarily based on her gender.
“My short time (3 years) there was nothing but positive,” Lisa Cullen, who labored for Topic Matter and a predecessor agency as an account supervisor from 2014 to 2016, stated in a textual content message. “The company always looked for ways to grow me professionally. I always felt supported by Dan [Sallick] and Paul [Frick], who I have known for more than 20 years.”
However the predominant sentiment amongst former feminine workers who spoke to POLITICO — and some males as effectively — went within the different path.
“In this type of work environment, it’s easier to try to avoid the bad actors, look the other way and keep the blinders on, but that is how this mistreatment is allowed to continue,” Chang stated earlier than the settlement. “There is tremendous pressure to stay silent. But I also know that it’s not just me, that there are dozens of talented women who have been driven out of Subject Matter.”
