TED talks empire grappling with sexual harassment
Interviews, emails detail organization’s struggle to handle predatory behavior
SAN FRANCISCO — When Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor who now campaigns against sexual harassment, took the stage at a TED event this month, she described 2017 as a tipping point in the fight against workplace misconduct.
But behind the scenes, TED owner Chris Anderson and other senior officials had been grappling with accusations for much of the year that their own conferences, famed for turning short speeches by leading figures into viral videos, had not been a safe place for women — and that the atmosphere of predatory male behavior was getting worse.
At least five people, including a past main stage speaker, told TED officials that they were harassed or groped during the organization’s flagship conference in Vancouver in April, according to interviews and email correspondence seen by The Washington Post.
The nonprofit’s general counsel Nishat Ruiter said in an April email to TED’s senior leadership that she, too, had been “touched inappropriately but let it go.” She added she was finding it difficult to believe the issue was being “addressed by TED effectively. We are clearly not doing enough.”
In a statement to The Post, TED acknowledged several incidents had occurred at the Vancouver conference and said it had taken action.
“We did hear from a small number of women attendees at TED2017 about harassment. As a result, two men were immediately disinvited and won’t be returning,” TED said.
TED also said: “Creating a safe and welcoming environment is critical to the success of our conferences, and we have no tolerance for harassment of any kind. As soon as we heard there were issues at our conference in 2017 we took immediate action to address the specific allegations, then worked with leading experts to upgrade our code of conduct. Today we make the code of conduct extremely clear to all TED conference attendees, and encourage our community to report violations.”
In the decades since TED’s original owners got the idea of turning 18-minute talks by world leaders, chief executives, academics, artists and others into a business under the slo-
gan “ideas worth spreading,” the conferences and spin-off events have become known as a meeting place for the global elite, particularly leaders in the technology industry. Anderson’s private foundation acquired TED in 2001.
The gatherings are regarded as a place where the likes of former Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates, scientist Richard Dawkins and former Vice President Al Gore could be encountered in the hallways, and the organization’s talks have been watched online more than 1 billion times worldwide.
Most people pay $10,000 to attend and must apply for tickets.
The Post reviewed email exchanges among senior TED officials at the time of the April conference, sparked by a complaint by a long-time attendee, who complained of sexual harassment and being offered “every drug known to man.” The problem was so bad that the woman decided to pack her bags and leave, telling Anderson that it would be her last TED conference.
Anderson forwarded the complaint to his leadership team, saying, “I don’t want to overstate what’s here (until we can find more) but I do think we’ll need to think seriously about what more we can do.”
Tom Rielly, the organization’s director of partnerships whose satirical monologues are the traditional closing event of the conferences, wrote in response that harassment had occurred in past years.
“I’m afraid as difficult as it is to talk about, experiences like this have been going on for years, to varying degrees,” Rielly wrote. “I agree this is absolutely heartbreaking and stomach turning.” He also suggested that alcohol could be fueling the misconduct.
Ruiter, the general counsel, said that she had heard of more such incidents at this year’s conference.
“I heard from so many women unprompted about the type of advances that were everywhere, and that felt ‘different’ from years past,” Ruiter wrote. “This included a TED Prize winner and two TEDsters who spoke to me about this and more than one staff member.”
Ruiter then quoted complaints she had heard from other women
at the conference.
“I was literally jumped on, grabbed, and held,” Ruiter wrote. “Guys are taking major liberties.”
And it went on. “Don’t say anything … but please change this,” one woman pleaded with Ruiter, according to the email she sent to her colleagues.
TED did not make Anderson, Rielly or Ruiter available for interviews. The three did not respond to personal inquiries.
Nilofer Merchant, an author and former Apple executive whose 2013 TED talk received nearly 3 million views, said in an interview that sexual harassment is not a new problem for the TED conferences.
“The same thing was happening 5 years ago. It’s still happening,” she said. “What’s different now is we’re sharing our stories.”
At the April conference, Merchant said a longtime attendee pressed his erection against her at a bar. She recalls mouthing to her friend who was nearby: Help me.
“In this awkward moment, you’re trying not to make it an issue,” she said in an interview. “I’m trying to spend my time at TED, which I paid $10,000 to attend, talking to people about ideas and not worry about the guy with his boner pressed against me.”
Merchant said she saw the same man approach two of her friends, who were talking to a TED newcomer in her early 20s, and say, “Oh, three black women together. What should I do with that?”
She reported the incidents to TED officials. She said she was only told Thursday that the man she had reported had been banned.
In their email exchanges, Anderson, Rielly and others discussed ways to address such problems, including whether to make an announcement from the stage about an anonymous hotline, created in November 2016, that would forward complaints to TED leadership.
They discussed communicating a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment of attendees, creating clear guidelines and penalties for behaviors that constitute harassment, and coming up with a formal process to handle complaints.
The TED officials also expressed worries about the complaints becoming public.
“It seems 51% chance or more that there will be at least social media posts about the issue if not articles (What is our response),” Rielly wrote.
Still, Rielly also wrote that the first step to addressing the issue could be: “Admit we have a serious problem.”
Internally, TED also has faced sexual harassment complaints against its own managers.
Jordan Reeves, a former junior staffer, said in an interview that while he was working at the organization, he was harassed by Rielly in 2014. Rielly told him “incredibly” explicit jokes at work and told him that his “ass looked nice” in jeans.
“I was hearing from everybody, men and women alike, about misconduct,” Reeves said. “It seemed so systemic that I was overwhelmed.”
Reeves said he complained about the incidents to Anderson and another executive, telling them that “if things don’t change systemically I’m going to leave.”
Anderson replied that Rielly was only joking and asked Reeves to keep the conversation between them, according to Reeves.
Reeves gave notice about six months later.
TED said in its response: “There was indeed an unhappy staff departure in 2014, but it’s not correct that the situation was not investigated. We believe it was dealt with appropriately.”
In 2014, TED offered to settle a sexual harassment case with a young woman who worked on one of the organization’s digital marketing teams for about $31,000, according to documents obtained by The Post.
The woman’s lawyer told Anderson that the woman’s boss had repeatedly asked her about her sex life, according to a May 2014 complaint she filed to TED, which was obtained by The Post.
After she reported the misconduct, her boss took her off some accounts she had developed — a move she saw as retaliatory, according to the complaint. That document also alleges that TED had initially asked her to keep working under her boss.
TED did not comment on the settlement.
The accusations against TED come at a time when allegations of sexual harassment and abuse by powerful men are roiling Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the U.S. Congress.
The heightened awareness of sexual misconduct in the workplace and other professional settings was sparked in part by Carlson, who reached a $20 million settlement with Fox in 2016 after suing her old boss Roger Ailes for sexual harassment.