TIME’S UP GROUP WILL ‘COMPLETELY REBUILD’

Report catalogs internal complaints; staff to be laid off

The anti-workplace harassment advocacy group Time’s Up will lay off nearly all of its 25 remaining employees and restructure, after an internal report prompted by the group’s involvement with former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo identified significant internal failures.

“We are going down to the studs to completely rebuild,” said Ashley Judd, an actor and author who serves as one of the group’s four remaining board members. “We can overcome our organizational lapses to serve the needs of women of all kinds. This organization is bigger than any one person. The movement is bigger than any one person.”

The decision to effectively restart from scratch a group founded by Hollywood and political leaders in 2018 follows revelations this summer that senior leaders consulted with Cuomo advisers after the Democratic governor had been accused of sexual harassment by a former aide. At one point, then-CEO

Tina Tchen, who previously worked in the White House during the Obama presidency, told her colleagues to “stand down” from a plan to release a statement supporting his accuser after two people connected with the group spoke with the governor’s aides.

Those revelations led to the resignations in August of Tchen and board chairwoman Roberta Kaplan. A majority of the group’s board resigned in the weeks that followed, and the group hired an independent consultant to conduct a factfinding mission about the state of the organization.

That report, based on interviews with 85 current and former staff and other stakeholders, catalogs a broad range of internal complaints about the organization’s leadership and direction, from a lack of clear strategy to poor internal communication and internal conflicts of interest.

Staff members were told Friday that their jobs would end this year, but that they would continue to be paid severance through March 1, according to a spokesperson for the group. The board has not announced a timeline or process for deciding on the organization’s next strategic mission and leadership.