Magic Leap company sued for gender discrimination

Magic Leap’s former vice president of strategic marketing has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the company, asserting that management did not include females in top leadership jobs and ignored requests to discuss the hiring of more women to technical positions.

Tannen Campbell, the former executive, was hired by Magic Leap in April 2015 by CEO Rony Abovitz. In her complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, she claims Abovitz wanted her to help make the company less of a “boys club.”

The lawsuit says Magic Leap’s corporate culture is one of “macho bullying,” where women’s work and ideas are “ridiculed openly and their opinions ignored in favor of those of their male counterparts.”

Magic Leap spokeswoman Julia Gaynor did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Wednesday. The company, which maintains offices in Dania Beach and Plantation, is developing products that use a “mixed reality” computing platform.

The lawsuit claims that Abovitz wanted to make sure Magic Leap’s yet-to-be unveiled products were friendly to women.

But Campbell was fired in December 2016, the lawsuit alleges, after several attempts to meet with Abovitz to discuss what she described as gender discrimination issues at the company.

Campbell initially filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and was given a “right to sue” letter on Feb. 8, the lawsuit says.

In the lawsuit, she alleges that neither Abovitz nor the “chief administrative officer” Henk Vlietstra took action to improve the company culture or ensure women were hired to become Magic Leap’s “wizards,” as it calls new technical employees on its career website.

The lawsuit alleges she prepared a presentation describing Magic Leap’s “gender problem,” which she claims in the lawsuit Abovitz ignored.

The lawsuit claims Magic Leap had no women in leadership positions. In addition, only 14 percent of its total employees were women and 3 percent of its engineers were women.

Campbell has petitioned the court to award unspecified damages, including back pay and re-instatement to her job.

Magic Leap has raised $1.4 billion from Google, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and other investors.

Locally, Plantation and the state of Florida agreed to an $8 million economic incentives package for the company, contingent on the company creating 725 jobs with an average annual salary of $100,000, and the retention of 217 jobs.