A senior manager at PwC sent out a firm wide email on her last day describing discrimination she faced. See comments for the full email.

Just read that wall of text. Gonna go out on a limb and say that the judgment she showed in sending that is probably more indicative of why she wasn’t promoted than her race.

Yup I experienced the same thing at PwC and left for EY. I knew things were messed up when all my snapshots were “Demonstrated at next level” for 2 promotion cycles and was told to wait another promo cycle. The reason I was given was that my utilization was 5% below my expected staff class. Reason for my utilization being low (which I explained in my self snapshot and my coach and RL knew all this) was I had surgery and took off 1 week in February to recover and the power line went out in my home for a week in September and I didn’t work for 2 days because of it. The rest of the days, i rented an airbnb to keep working and get deliverables out before the deadline still and helped other teams file before their deadlines. Oh, I never requested to be reimbursed for the Airbnb too. I met every other metric for promotion like teaching training, helping with hiring and having stellar performance reviews including 3 performance differentiators. They made me feel small, unmotivated and worthless. I had to leave and so glad I did. Even the managers and SM I work with were shocked I didn’t get promoted because they recommended it. One SM couldn’t believe utilization was the only reason for not being promoted given that all other metrics were above expectations. EY gave me the promo I deserved because they saw the screenshots of my performance snapshots and you can’t argue those facts. Don’t be black at PwC

Sorry got caught up in a meeting as I was posting here's the email:
Dear friends and colleagues,

Unfortunately, today is my last day at the firm. Many of you have reached out to me over the past few months, but I have not responded to your notes. This is not because I have fallen out of our friendship, but because I have lost faith in what our firm stands for. And here is why. Our firm discriminated against me by repeatedly denying me a promotion because I am a Black woman who was not born in the US. When I complained about this discrimination, the firm retaliated against me which culminated in my termination today. I have shared my story below and hope you will take the time to read it.

About 12 months ago, as our country and the world experienced a social movement and reckoning over racism, our leaders seized every opportunity to tell us that they were rallying behind the end of race discrimination, in particular in the workplace. At the same time, however, they were also denying me the promotion to Director for the third time because of my race, color, national origin, and sex.

The Partners and Directors team that helped me prepare my case worked with me to escalate this injustice at top levels of our firm. Every single leader - FS Diversity & Inclusion Leader, FS Leader, Strategy& Leader and a few more - chose to look the other way and protect the other few Partners who had been using untruthful facts to misrepresent my performance and relationships with clients during CRTs in May 2019, November 2019, and May 2020.

Behind the façade of its outward messaging regarding diversity, inclusion, and antidiscrimination, PwC fosters a work culture that stifles the development of Black, female, and non-native born employees, preventing them from achieving promotions and advancing within the Firm. This comes as no surprise when we look at the composition of the PwC leadership team, which fosters a discriminatory culture.

The U.S. leadership team, comprised of 19 members, is staffed with only one Black woman and two Black men.

The U.S. Board of Partners, comprised of 22 members, has only one Black man among its members.

As for Strategy&, there is only one Black man and not a single woman amongst 23 global leaders.

Aren’t we religiously telling our clients that effective diversity and inclusion starts at the top? Aren’t we telling our executive clients that they have to walk the talk to lead real cultural change? So why is it that we keep talking the talk and placing our “efforts” in programs that do not drive any real change in the status of Black people at this firm? As someone who specializes in culture and gives this very advice to our clients, I find myself unable to escape this dissonance between what I tell them to do and what I know PwC has failed to do internally.

As of the third discriminatory denial of my promotion, I was the only Black left within FS Strategy&’s non-leadership team. As one Partner put it at the time “y

There are certain traits they look in partners other than just performance, things they can’t put on paper. No matter what grudge she has against the firm, sending a firm wide email like that explains why she’s not promoted.

I agree that change is needed to bring more diversity to our leadership teams, but her email provides no examples of discriminatory behaviors.

Oh wow! Can’t judge who is right and who is wrong since I don’t know the full story. But it reminds me of my personal experience when I was working in another big four (not PwC, not Deloitte, you guess it) I worked with partners who had no issues making comments in staffing meetings like “just give that project (a not very favorable project) to that senior. She can’t say no. She can’t quit because she has visa issues, unless she wants to get deported”, or “if she doesn’t do a good job, let’s send her back to where she is from”. So what happened to them? Nothing. What happened to us? We all got bullied and quit. A few of us reported on them to HR and ethics, and nobody cared. So yeah it happens and it happens a lot and there’s really nothing we can do about it.

I wish there were details and examples

If she got passed up for a promotion to Senior Manager I would totally get the anger, but the biggest thing firms look at when they promote people to partner/director is their ability to win work and no where in her email does she mention any client wins she’s had or that she was experiencing discrimination from partners selecting SMs for pursuit teams. I’ve never heard of anyone being promoted to partner or even director based on anything other then their ability to win work.

Dear friends and colleagues,

Unfortunately, today is my last day at the firm. Many of you have reached out to me over the past few months, but I have not responded to your notes. This is not because I have fallen out of our friendship, but because I have lost faith in what our firm stands for. And here is why. Our firm discriminated against me by repeatedly denying me a promotion because I am a Black woman who was not born in the US. When I complained about this discrimination, the firm retaliated against me which culminated in my termination today. I have shared my story below and hope you will take the time to read it.

About 12 months ago, as our country and the world experienced a social movement and reckoning over racism, our leaders seized every opportunity to tell us that they were rallying behind the end of race discrimination, in particular in the workplace. At the same time, however, they were also denying me the promotion to Director for the third time because of my race, color, national origin, and sex.

The Partners and Directors team that helped me prepare my case worked with me to escalate this injustice at top levels of our firm. Every single leader - FS Diversity & Inclusion Leader, FS Leader, Strategy& Leader and a few more - chose to look the other way and protect the other few Partners who had been using untruthful facts to misrepresent my performance and relationships with clients during CRTs in May 2019, November 2019, and May 2020.

Behind the façade of its outward messaging regarding diversity, inclusion, and antidiscrimination, PwC fosters a work culture that stifles the development of Black, female, and non-native born employees, preventing them from achieving promotions and advancing within the Firm. This comes as no surprise when we look at the composition of the PwC leadership team, which fosters a discriminatory culture.

The U.S. leadership team, comprised of 19 members, is staffed with only one Black woman and two Black men.

The U.S. Board of Partners, comprised of 22 members, has only one Black man among its members.

As for Strategy&, there is only one Black man and not a single woman amongst 23 global leaders.

Aren’t we religiously telling our clients that effective diversity and inclusion starts at the top? Aren’t we telling our executive clients that they have to walk the talk to lead real cultural change? So why is it that we keep talking the talk and placing our “efforts” in programs that do not drive any real change in the status of Black people at this firm? As someone who specializes in culture and gives this very advice to our clients, I find myself unable to escape this dissonance between what I tell them to do and what I know PwC has failed to do internally.

As of the third discriminatory denial of my promotion, I was the only Black left within FS Strategy&’s non-leadership team. As one Partner put it at the time “you are the last one standing”. Why is it that being Black at this firm has to be a constant uphill battle to prove that you deserve your seat? Why is it that I have had to consistently wait 1-2 more years on average to get the acknowledgements and promotions that my peers have gotten, when I keep bringing stellar performance reviews into CRTs?

This is to say that discrimination has been a reality for me for a long time, and has simply reached the point where my constant optimism can no longer make sense out of it. It has been a toxic force that does everything it can to:

Take away your dignity

Make you feel weak

Portray you as a poor performer and third-class consultant

Prevent you from bringing your authentic self to work; it’s not enough to be a great team player and high performer, you have to put “who you are” to the side - remind me what D&I is again?!

Push you out of the firm, because not even our leaders would stand up to do the right thing

During the May 2020 social movement, one Partner reached out to me, after being summoned to, saying “Murielle, I read Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird”. What?! To every non-Black Partner and staff at this firm, we do not need you to tell us about the Black stories or authors that you’re reading or the Black friends that you have or the African countries you have visited. What we need is for you to demonstrate true empathy when you see unfairness being done to a Black employee. STAND up, SPEAK up, CALL out. Call out colleagues on the offenses they’re perpetrating. I would not be in this position, feeling I must speak up and call out PwC’s hypocrisy to all of you, if the Partners in the CRT room had spoken up and called out their peers when they saw them derail the process for my CRT reviews which led to a biased outcome.

That offenders rarely get held accountable goes beyond the fact that our Partners and leaders sadly do not speak up when they should. The Firm continuously protects those offenders, leaving more Black, female, and other minority employees at their mercy. How, you may wonder? Go take a look at the contract PwC made you sign.

PwC forces employees to sign binding arbitration agreements that rob them of their ability to have their day in court and to publicly call out PwC’s discriminatory, retaliatory, and other unlawful conduct. As a result, it is no surprise that PwC makes little to no change to its policies, procedures, and practices despite the multiple cases that have been filed for discrimination and retaliation.

I will leave you with this. Sexual harassment used to be hidden under such “keep it secret” arbitration agreements until the MeToo movement. Many leading companies, including Google and PwC, excluded it from the arbitration agreement as a result of social pressure. This being said, Google also excluded “Race Discrimination” from its arbitration agreements, recognizing how much hiding discrimination at work behind the veil of confidential arbitration hindered the career advancement of Black employees. Why is it that our firm, a leader in its own territory, claiming to be a leader for our cross-industry national and global clients, cannot take the same simple step when it comes to ending racism and discrimination in the workplace? How much longer would our leaders turn away from doing the right thing to protect themselves if they knew they could be held publicly accountable? When will they finally do something that actually moves the needle and makes this firm a place where Black and other minorities don’t have to do three times more to prove their worth?

Dear colleagues and friends, I have enjoyed working with many of you and wish you the best of luck. Hopefully we can stay in touch.

I got the email.... half of my friends got it and half of them didnt

Where’s the email?? Spill the tea🍵

Where’s the email lol?

Where is it?

This e-mail will just create debate among people. Either you will agree or disagree with her statement. There’s no in between.

I’m trynna find the email in my mailbox again but I couldn’t find it anymore

Which kind of discrimination ? Can you describe

https://joinfishbowl.com/post_wipsoj99c8