Justice of the app
Making sex harassment easier to report
A handful of Silicon Valley executives hope they have come up with a powerful weapon to fight sexual harassment.
The group, including former Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, have funded an app called AllVoices that will enable victims of sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace to anonymously report the incident to the company’s chief executive and board.
AllVoices, expected to launch in the coming weeks, will be led by Twenty-First Century Fox Vice President Claire Schmidt, who will join the LA company as CEO after exiting her current job, the startup said on Tuesday.
“Employees still do not feel safe reporting harassment at work,” Schmidt told The Post. “Some of them fear retaliation or that they might lose their jobs.”
Schmidt, herself a survivor of sexual assault, explained that she first began thinking of such an app six months ago while speaking to people who had experienced harassment at work.
The current climate, in which powerful men like Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K. are falling from grace, gave a sense of urgency to her cause, Schmidt said.
“CEOs and boards really don’t have the data to understand the scale of the prob- lem within their organizations, and also the nature of the problem,” she said. “Our objective, and our first priority, is to give them the data so that they can’t say they didn’t know.”
AllVoices is in the process of closing a $2 million funding round led by Tinder cofounder and Chairman Sean Rad and Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff and WSGR.
Rad is also serving as an adviser to AllVoices — as is Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer whose blog post earlier this year lifted the curtain on the ride-hailing outfit’s toxic workplace culture.
AllVoices already has a number of companies that have agreed to serve as early partners and clients, and Schmidt said that she hopes her site will help improve company cultures.
AllVoices’ business model is still being tweaked, backers said.