Silenced: How America's Love Affair with the NDA Protects Workplace Predators
Non-disclosure agreements are a powerful tool to silence survivors of sexual harassment and to uphold racist and sexist hierarchies in many workplaces. The rise of #MeToo revealed the central role NDAs have had in maintaining codes of silence. Straying from the original function to protect trade secrets, NDAs are now often used to shield powerful men from accountability. In this Clayman Conversations event, speakers will discuss the gender and racial dimensions of NDAs. How are NDAs used across sectors and organizations? How are activists mobilizing for state and federal legislation to address the perniciousness of NDAs? What are the opportunities and challenges in eliminating the systematic harms caused by NDAs?
About the Speakers:
Gretchen Carlson is an internationally recognized advocate for women’s rights whose bold actions against Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes helped pave the way for the global #MeToo movement. Named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” she is the author of the bestselling books “Be Fierce” and “Getting Real.” One of America’s most successful television journalists, Gretchen has reported our nation’s biggest stories for nearly two decades at CBS News and FOX News. Since 2017, she has advocated in Congress for the bipartisan “Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act,” co-founded the non-profit Lift Our Voices to eradicate forced arbitration and NDAs and returned to television as a special contributor to the new People Magazine show PEOPLE TV. Carlson also hosts a daily straight down the middle news podcast “Get The News With Gretchen Carlson” on Quake Media. Her many honors include the Sandra Day O’Connor Lifetime Achievement award, NOW’s Women of Power and Influence Award and the Radio & Television Digital News Association’s First Amendment Leadership Award. Carlson is a March of Dimes Trustee, a member of Women Moving Millions and supports underserved women through her Gift of Courage Fund.
Political activist and advocate Julie Roginsky has long been an outspoken champion of women’s rights and issues. A nationally recognized political consultant, Roginsky began her career working at a prominent organization dedicated to electing more women to political office. Throughout her career, she has focused her efforts on mentoring and empowering women who seek to become engaged in the political process.
Roginsky is a former contributor at CNBC and the Fox News Channel, where she was a frequent co-host of “Outnumbered” and “The Five”. In 2017, she became one of the first women to file a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and its chairman. Since then, she has fought relentlessly against non-disclosure agreements and other tools that organizations use to silence women from publicly disclosing their experiences with toxic work environments. She serves as an advisor to major corporations, start-ups, non-profits, labor unions, and dozens of elected officials, including governors, senators, members of the House of Representatives, and state legislators.
Roginsky received both her B.A. and M.A. with honors from Boston University, where her graduate work focused on studying the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its transition from a planned to a market economy. Her passion for empowering women began in college, when she spent time working at the Labour Party in London, focusing on policies affecting women in the United Kingdom. Roginsky previously served as a decade-long member of the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University and currently serves on the Alumni Board of Princeton Day School, from which she graduated. She lives in New York City with her son.
Ifeoma Ozoma is the Founder and Principal of Earthseed, a consulting firm advising individuals, organizations, and companies on tech accountability, public policy, health misinformation, and related communications. She is a tech policy expert with experience leading global public policy partnerships, content safety development, and US Federal, State, and International policymaker engagement at Pinterest, Facebook, and Google. Ifeoma is a co-sponsor of the Silenced No More Act. This legislation, authored by CA State Senator Connie Leyva, will allow every individual in California to share information about discrimination or harassment they have faced on the job, even after signing an NDA. Additionally, Ifeoma is currently spearheading an initiative that will provide tech whistleblowers with needed resources, and leading a project to scale the protections in the Silenced No More Act to tens of thousands more workers via shareholder activism. Ifeoma’s health misinformation initiatives have been lauded by the World Health Organization, the Washington Post’s Editorial Board, and the New York Times. Originally from Anchorage, AK, Ifeoma is an ardent outdoors enthusiast as well as a nature photographer. She received a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University.
This event is free and open to the public. Live captioning available.
Clayman Conversation: "Silenced" Suggested Reading List Oct 2021