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Arianna Huffington, Uber’s independent board member, said she is serious about leading the investigation into a former Uber employee’s claims of sexism and sexual harassment, so much so that she will “hold the leadership team’s feet to the fire on this issue.”
That includes CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick, she said. In a statement, the well-known Internet blogger and co-founder of the Huffington Post, said: “Travis spoke very honestly about the mistakes he’s made — and about how he wants to take the events of the last 48 hours to build a better Uber. It was great to see employees holding managers accountable. I also view it as my responsibility to hold the leadership team’s feet to the fire on this issue.”
Huffington will be joined in looking into the thorny issue and wider issues too by former Attorney General Eric Holder and another lawyer from Holder’s firm, Tammy Albarran. Also part of the investigation are two Uber employees: HR head Liane Hornsey and associate counsel Angela Padilla.
According to Huffington, she met with Kalanick and Hornsey on Tuesday for over an hour to discuss women in the workplace. Uber’s weekly all-hands meeting is also taking place today in San Francisco, where the topic is sure to be discussed with employees.
There is a lot to talk about and little of it pretty. This all stems from a blog post by Susan Fowler, one of Uber’s female engineers, who wrote that multiple reports of sexual harassment from a single staffer went ignored because, among other things, he was a “high performer.” Fowler also wrote that she faced threats of retaliation from her manager for reporting her director for propositioning her, as well as many other incidents that paint the company as chaotically run.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
