Cynthia Perry, a former design research senior manager at Salesforce who left earlier this month, posted her resignation letter on LinkedIn that detailed her negative treatment at the company, Protocol first reported. In it, Perry, a Black woman, alleges she experienced “countless microaggressions and inequity” during her time there.
Ultimately, Perry said she left her job because she had been “Gaslit, manipulated, bullied, neglected, and mostly unsupported” by folks she chose not to name.
“Salesforce, for me, is not a safe place to come to work,” she wrote. “It’s not a place where I can be my full self. It’s not a place where I have been invested in. It’s not a place full of opportunity. It’s not a place of Equality for All. It’s not a place where well-being matters.”
Salesforce has long been vocal about the importance of equality. In 2016, Salesforce named Tony Prophet as its first-ever chief equality officer. That came about a year after Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said its major diversity focus was “the women’s issue.”
Salesforce was one of the many companies that came out in support of Black people in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
“Now more than ever we must support one another as allies and speak up for justice and equality,” the company said in a tweet.
But companywide, Salesforce is just 3.4% Black in the U.S., while its leadership team is only 2.3% Black, according to its November 2020 diversity report.
“For privacy reasons, we can’t comment on individual employee matters but Equality is one of our highest values and we have been dedicated to its advancement both inside and outside of our company since we were founded almost 22 years ago,” a Salesforce spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Perry is the latest Black female tech worker to speak out about her negative experience at a tech company. Last year, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks came forward with allegations of racial and gender discrimination at Pinterest. Then, Dr. Timnit Gebru said she was fired for speaking out about diversity issues in artificial intelligence at Google. That was shortly before Google former diversity recruiter April Curley alleged Google fired her for calling the company out “on their racist bullshit.”
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