There’s a lot more to this case.
A Black Amazon manager is suing company executives in a discrimination and sexual harassment and assault case
Charlotte Newman, a former adviser to Sen. Cory Booker who works for Amazon Web Services, is suing Amazon and company executives.
By
Jason Del Rey@DelRey Mar 1, 2021, 1:39pm EST
Share this on Facebook (opens in new window)
Amazon Web Services senior manager Charlotte Newman is suing the company.
Courtesy of Charlotte Newman
A Black Amazon senior manager and former economic policy adviser to Sen. Cory Booker is suing the tech giant and two of its current executives for alleged race and gender discrimination, and for allegedly violating the Equality Pay Act, according to a lawsuit filed in district court in Washington, DC, on Monday. The suit also alleges that a former Amazon executive sexually harassed and assaulted her.
Charlotte Newman, a senior manager who has worked in the Amazon Web Services division of the company since January 2017, told Recode in an interview that the discrimination began when she was first hired at a level lower for a public policy manager role than she applied for — and what she believes her qualifications justified.
She said the discrimination continued when she was denied a promotion for more than a year even though she was performing aspects of the more senior role and had begun pushing her manager to assign her to a higher level. She was elevated to a senior manager position in fall 2019, more than two and a half years after being hired. Newman said what made matters worse was that her first boss, an AWS director named Steve Block, employed what she believed were racial stereotypes in telling her that her communication style was “too direct,” and “just scary,” and that she “can intimidate people.”
Some of the alleged actions that Newman said were the most painful involve a former AWS director, Andres Maz, a senior colleague who at times assigned work to Newman. Newman alleges that Maz sexually harassed her on several occasions, including propositioning her for sex. The complaint also accuses Maz of sexual assault, including pressing on her lap near her genitalia and groping her thigh under a table at a work dinner, and on a later occasion yanking her long braided hair when she attempted to leave a post-work outing.
“There’s been deep emotional pain,” Newman said in an interview with Recode. “All of the hard work, all of the sacrifices I made, my education — none of that saved me from someone who’s a predator and living in fear of what else he might do.”
A third AWS executive, a vice president named Shannon Kellogg, who was Newman’s manager after Block, allegedly relied on feedback from Maz in his judgment of Newman’s performance, thus helping to create a work environment in which Newman felt unable to report the sexual harassment to her managers for fear of retaliation. The suit also alleges that Kellogg and Block “frequently complained about the personalities of other female employees, which is not their common practice regarding men under their supervision.”
Amazon spokesperson Kate Brinks responded after publication with a statement: “Amazon works hard to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture, and these allegations do not reflect those efforts or our values. We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind and thoroughly investigate all claims and take appropriate action. We are currently investigating the new allegations included in this lawsuit.”
She did not immediately respond to a query asking which specific “new allegations” the company was referencing.
Maz could not be reached for comment and an attorney believed to represent him did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Newman’s suit was filed after
Recode published an investigation last week that detailed allegations by Amazon employees that Black corporate workers face bias and an unlevel playing field where they receive lower performance ratings than non-Black peers and are promoted less frequently. Newman said the Recode report was one of the reasons she decided to speak publicly about her experience.
“I strongly believe that Amazon should be harnessing the light of diverse leadership rather than dimming the light of Black employees and other employees of color,” Newman said. “For years I had been sort of suffering in silence, [but] I’m sure there are a lot of people who now feel more empowered to add their voices to the story, and hopefully there’s some real change that occurs.”
Newman said the Recode investigation resonated for many reasons, including details of an Amazon hiring practice that some employees call “down-leveling” — or “de-leveling,” as her lawsuit refers to it. All 10 Black Amazon employees interviewed for the report told Recode that either they or a Black colleague they know were hired at a lower level than they believe their qualifications justified.
It is not uncommon for women, and especially Black women, to have a role advertised at one level but extended an offer at a position that is lower,” former Amazon diversity manager Chanin Kelly-Rae told Recode in the investigation. An Amazon spokesperson previously said that it is common for down-leveling to happen, but that the practice occurs with candidates from all backgrounds.
Newman says she was taken aback by the original Amazon job offer at the lower level but accepted it because of the explanation that the scope of her work would be limited to “Level 6” responsibilities — in particular, that the job would only require her to do US-focused policy work. Newman said she also did not know of the allegations from other Amazonians that down-leveling may happen more often to Black women. Before joining Amazon, Newman, a Harvard Business School graduate, worked for three years for Booker, advising the New Jersey senator on economic policy issues. She previously worked for three other Congress members, all of whom served on the House Financial Services Committee.
But after interviewing for a senior manager role in AWS’s public policy division — Level 7 in Amazon’s hierarchy — that would have included work in both North and South America, she was ultimately offered a US-focused position at Level 6. Within months, though, she says she was assigned projects outside of the US. Newman said she eventually realized that several of her white Level 6 peers had less work experience than she did and lacked graduate degrees, and one allegedly received a promotion to Level 7 shortly after being hired. The suit claims the leveling error cost Newman millions, with the compensation difference between the levels growing exponentially since stock awards make up a significant portion of Amazon pay packages, and Amazon’s stock price has increased rapidly in recent years.