Two Black women publicly resigned from Pinterest saying they faced humiliation, retaliation and were passed over for promotion

The women were highly visible and respected members of Pinterest's public policy team.
Ifeoma Ozoma, a Google and Facebook alum, told stories of being "doxed" by a male colleague where her private info was shared to scary groups on the internet, her struggle for higher pay and what she believed was a retaliatory performance review.
Aerica Shimizu Banks, another Google alum, shared stories of fighting for pay, being stripped of her management duties and other ways she felt she was targeted.
Their tweets are going viral on Twitter.
Racial justice organization Color of Change is now demanding that Pinterest apologize and compensate the women.
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Ifeoma Ozoma was at Pinterest for almost two years, according to her LinkedIn profile, but she became exhausted by her experiences there and recently quit, she announced Monday on Twitter.

She tweeted that her time at Pinterest was filled with professional wins that was marred by spending a full year unsuccessfully lobbying for pay, as well as enduring the experience of a white male colleague who "doxed" her: "he shared my cell number, photo, & name w/ violently racist/misogynistic parts of the internet," she tweeted , and she felt the response from Pinterest HR was "dangerously inadequate."

She says that she stayed mum on these experiences, trying to work within the corporate system and be "professional," as she put it. Ozoma was on the public policy and impact team, a PR/communications and policy team. Her breaking point was a poor review from her manager. He criticized the language she used to describe a new policy that Pinterest and The Knot put in place late year to stop advertising former slave plantations as charming wedding venues, she said.

She says she's not the only black woman to have quit. Aerica Shimizu Banks is the other one. She is also publicly tweeting about her Pinterest experience, volunteering her own experience as Ozoma's tweet went viral.

Banks was hired to lead Pinterest's DC public policy office. "What should have been a moment of pride and the beginning of a long journey achieving federal and social impact wins for the company, Pinners, and the communities it serves instead marked a period of glaringly unfair pay, intense discrimination, and terrifying retaliation," she tweeted.

Aerica Shimizu Banks Aerica Shimizu Banks

Ozoma says that it was scary for her to come forward and tweet about her experience, and she did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Banks also did not immediately respond for comment, nor did Pinterest.

But Ozoma felt compelled to share her experience after Pinterest issued its public statement of support for Black Lives Matter.

As part of that promised support, Pinterest has said it is "listening and acting" and promised to elevate content on racial justice on its site. It donated 25,000 shares (worth $500,000) to racial justice organizations, donated $250,000 to businesses damaged during the protests and promised to spend another $750,000 in advertising for organizations that promote racial justice.

These promises felt hollow to Ozama, she said, after her frustrating time at the company.

"Racism is dehumanizing and exhausting. I busted my ass at Yale, Google, then Facebook before Pinterest recruited me as the *second hire* on the global Public Policy team. I led work that raised our public policy profile globally," she tweeted. But ultimately, she left because she felt "it didn't matter because I'm a Black woman."

Ifeoma Ozoma LinkedIn/Ifeoma Ozoma

Meanwhile, Color Of Change, a civil rights advocacy group, has issued a statement on the situation that says, in part, "Color Of Change worked with Ifeoma and Aerica closely in their former roles to restrict the marketing of plantation weddings on Pinterest and overhaul the company's anti-harassment policies. We credit them for orienting the company's policies toward racial justice. However, even while claiming 'Black lives matter,' Pinterest sidelined Ifeoma and Aerica after they made the platform safer for Black users. To make matters worse, the company's leadership failed to intervene after Ifeoma was doxxed by another Pinterest employee."

Color Of Change wants Pinterest to apologize and compensate the women, adding. "To show a serious commitment to racial justice, the company should use this opportunity to change their hostile culture for Black workers and set an example for the tech industry."

Like most tech companies, Pinterest has said it's working on hiring a more diverse workforce. It's latest diversity report, issued in January, shows the company is 45% white, 44% Asian, 6% Hispanic/Latinx, 4% Black, and 1% two or more races.

Ozoma and Banks' tweets are going viral in part because they are such a visible part of the social responsibility tech landscape. Ozoma is a Yale graduate who was recruited for Pinterest from Facebook, and Google before that, and was a member of the Washington Post's 2020 Technology 202 Network, a diverse panel of people who WaPo routinely posed questions to and used their responses for stories and newsletters. Banks went to Oxford and Princeton, spent six years at Google, worked at the White House, among other stellar credentials.

Are you a Pinterest insider with insight to share? Contact Julie Bort via email at jbort@businessinsider.com or on encrypted chat app Signal at (970) 430-6112 (no PR inquiries, please). Open DMs on Twitter @Julie188.

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