Pinterest Shareholders Sue Company Executives Over Years of Alleged Workplace Discrimination

The suit claims the defendants have breached their fiduciary duties by ‘perpetrating and permitting’ discrimination

Pinterest shareholders are suing the company’s executives, including its chief executive and several board members, for their alleged role in discriminating against women and employees of color.

According to a complaint filed on Monday in a California federal court, “This case arises from Pinterest’s systemic culture, policy, and practice of illegal discrimination on the basis of race and sex,” from at least early 2018 to the present.

The lawsuit describes more than two years of misconduct at Pinterest, which it claims was committed and condoned by senior leadership. Named in the suit are Pinterest co-founders Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp, as well as the company’s chief financial officer Todd Morgenfeld. Additional defendants include board members Jeffrey Jordan, Jeremy Levine, Gokul Rajaram, Fredric Reynolds, Michelle Wilson, and Leslie Kilgore. (The company’s newest board member, Andrea Wishom, was not named in the action.)

The plaintiff is the Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island, which oversees more than $8.5 billion in Pinterest assets, Fast Company reported on Tuesday.

The complaint details the experiences of Black female employees Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, and Pinterest’s former chief operating officer Francoise Brougher. All three women publicly recounted their mistreatment at the company this year, which sparked a subsequent wave of employee activism, such as a virtual walkout by more than 200 Pinterest workers in August.

Ozoma and Banks, senior public policy employees, were the first to go public — alleging multiple instances of discrimination, retaliation, and pay inequality at Pinterest. Both quit in May, and their experiences of being personally targeted and rebuked by CEO Ben Silbermann were reported in July by the Washington Post. Ozoma and Banks told the Post they were punished for speaking out against racism and bias at the company in their performance reviews. When Ozoma’s personal information was doxxed on white…