New York Times hires Silicon Valley woman who spoke out about Uber
Susan Fowler’s writing about sexual harassment helped spark #MeToo movement
The woman whose blog post about sexual harassment at Uber was heard around the tech world and beyond has a new gig at one of the world’s most famous newspapers.
The words of former Uber engineer Susan Fowler triggered an investigation into the company’s culture and eventually brought down Travis Kalanick, the company’s co-founder and CEO. The post also sparked the #MeToo reckoning in Silicon Valley last year. On Monday, the New York Times announced that Fowler will join its opinion section as technology editor.
The twenty-something Berkeley resident will commission pieces for the newspaper’s op-ed section, but will also write some pieces, the New York Times said.
“She will bring her unique brand of courage, clarity of mind and moral purpose to our pages starting in September,” wrote the leaders of the paper’s opinion and editorial pages, James Bennet, Jim Dao and Katie Kingsbury.
In her now-famous 2,900-word blog post last February, Fowler wrote that she was sexually harassed by her manager at Uber, and that the company failed to do anything about it.
She realized the problem was more widespread, and that a culture of sexism pervaded the San Francisco company — which now has a new CEO and is trying to put its tarnished reputation behind it.
Since then, the #MeToo movement has spread to most of the work world. Plenty of harassers in the tech industry have had to come to terms with their behavior, including CEOs and venture capitalists such as Dave McClure and Chris Sacca — and legends such as Nolan Bushnell.
The movement sparked by Fowler came a couple of years after Ellen Pao lost her genderdiscrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Pao’s lawsuit had given the valley a peek into sexual harassment in the workplace; Fowler’s blog post blew it wide open.
In the past year, women in Hollywood also spoke up, including about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and others. Politicians such as Sen. Al Franken have stepped down.
Since her life-changing blog post, Fowler has been named Time’s Person of the Year, and has received various honors and accolades from publications and organizations. She is writing a memoir.
On Monday, she got kudos galore on the New York Times job from the journalism and tech worlds, and tweeted a response: “Thank you so much everyone for celebrating my new job with me! I am truly humbled by all of your excitement, and I will work very hard not to let you down. I can’t wait to get started!”