Uber CEO Kalanick steps away indefinitely
Probe of company’s culture reveals need for more accountability
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announced Tuesday he will take an indefinite leave of absence as the ride- hailing company starts to institute sweeping recommendations from an internal investigation into Uber’s culture and governance that was sparked by claims of pervasive sexism and questionable corporate practices.
Kalanick has been largely absent from the company’s San Francisco headquarters since late May, when his mother was killed in a boating accident and his father was seriously injured.
“For the last eight yearsmy life has always been about Uber,” Kalanick said in a statement. “Recent events have brought home for me that people are more important than work, and that I need to take some time off of the day- today to grieve mymother, whom I buried on Friday, to reflect, to work on myself, and to focus on building out a worldclass leadership team.”
Kalanick said he would remain available for counsel on the company’s “most strategic decisions.”
In his absence, Uber will be run by Kalanick’s leadership team, which consists of 14 senior executives including CTO Thuan Pham, U. S. operations chief Rachel Holt, chief product officer Jeff Holden and board member and first hire Ryan Graves.
Kalanick’s decision came the same day as the company — under fire for fostering a sexist and cutthroat office culture that didn’t shrink from shady tactics — released recommendations from a report by former U. S. attorney general Eric Holder that will also lessen some of his influence at the company. The nearly 50 recommendations, developed in the 31⁄ months 2 since the probe started, targeted everything from Kalanick’s role and control to ways for senior leadership to hold managers accountable for a cultural turnaround.
The recommendations include forming a board oversight committee ( Kalanick and co- founder Garrett Camp control voting rights in the privately held company), rewriting Uber’s cultural values, requiring leadership training and making inclusion and diversity a high priority.
Monday, Nestle executive Wan Ling Martello was appointed as an independent member of its board of directors. It recently hired Frances Frei, a Harvard Business School expert on cultural transformations.
The first line of the Holder report, compiled by Holder’s firm Covington & Burling and presented to Uber’s board a week ago, cites former engineer Susan Fowler’s explosive February blog post as the catalyst for the introspective turn at Uber.
Fowler, a former engineer at Uber who now works at start- up Stripe, described sexual harassment by a boss that was ignored by human resources because the manager was considered too valuable; she later found other women had experienced similar problems with the same manager. Women complaining to human resources were ignored or, in some cases, chastised for reporting. Tuesday, in response to the investigation recommendations, Fowler was less than enthusiastic on Twitter, calling the company’s actions to date “all optics.”
The report lands a day afterMonday’s resignation of senior vice president Emil Michael, at the center of many Uber controversies, as well as last week’s firing of 20 employees. More dismissals are expected.