Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Two Americans are the first women to medal in the monobob, the Oscars are set to get three hosts this year, and one lawyer is taking on Tesla and Pinterest. Have a great Tuesday.
– Attorney at law. If you were taking on Tesla or Pinterest, would you want a bull in your corner?
David Lowe bets yes—so much so that the the attorney has an oil painting of a bull pawing the ground featured prominently in his San Francisco office. It’s an apt, if on-the-nose, symbol. Lowe is behind several blockbuster gender discrimination lawsuits in Silicon Valley, Fortune‘s Michal Lev-Ram reports in a new profile out today. The lawyer won Françoise Brougher’s $22.5 million settlement with Pinterest in 2020; represented Laura Schwab in her suit against e-truck startup Rivian last year; and filed Jessica Barraza’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Tesla, before picking up six more Tesla cases. (Tesla hasn’t commented on most of these lawsuits; Rivian didn’t comment on Schwab’s suit; and Pinterest, as noted, settled with Brougher.)
Lowe’s‘s colleagues say the attorney is known for “shredd[ing] the CEOs of big tech companies.” For Lowe, his satisfaction comes from “the ability to come in and have the resources to take on this huge conglomerate defendant on behalf of someone who didn’t have much power or ability to advocate for herself.”
Gender discrimination isn’t a new area of focus for Lowe’s firm, Rudy Exelrod Zieff & Lowe; the practice handled Ellen Pao’s industry-shaking 2012 gender bias case against the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. While Lowe has now carved out a specialty in Silicon Valley law, he is hesitant to draw parallels between the different cases he handles. “Every case is different because every client comes to us with somewhat different objectives in mind,” he says.
Take Tesla, for example. The allegations are “directly out of the ’70s or ’80s,” Lowe says, with alleged incidents of physical and verbal sexual harassment. These days, Lowe says allegations typically follow a similar arc to Brougher’s at Pinterest, where discrimination was more insidious, taking the form of exclusion from important meetings or a gender pay gap. (Of course, Barraza and her fellow Tesla colleagues worked mostly on the factory floor, while Brougher sat in the C-suite, coloring the type of gender discrimination each employee might experience.)
Lowe’s splashy lawsuits may also have helped draw the attention of another plaintiff: the state of California, which last week sued Tesla, citing widespread racial discrimination at the automaker’s factory. The attorney doesn’t know to what extent his cases helped convince the state to file suit, but the barrage of headline-making allegations certainly bolsters each case in the court of public opinion.
“It’s not just a couple of bad apples,” Lowe says. “It’s a very bad, systemic problem.”
Read Michal’s full story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Olympic events. Americans Kaillie Humphries and Elana Meyers Taylor became the first women to medal in Olympic monobob, after the women's event was added for the first time this year. Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian figure skater, will be allowed to continue competing in the Olympics, but she and anyone who places in the top three alongside her won't receive any medals until Valieva's doping case is resolved.
- Blue jean blues. Jennifer Sey, global president of the Levi's brand, parted ways with the company after she became an outspoken advocate for keeping schools open without any mask requirements. Sey says that Levi's asked her to stop sharing her views on the topic so widely. She eventually quit and turned down $1 million in severance, she says, to continue openly discussing her views and the circumstances of her departure. Bloomberg
- Awards season. The Oscars will have hosts again! Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes are reportedly set to split hosting duties for the upcoming ceremony. The trio of female comedians would be the Academy Awards' first hosts since 2019. Variety
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Maura Pally of the Clinton Foundation will become executive director of the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. Former Peloton COO Mariana Garavaglia joins Relativity Space as chief business and people officer. Former First Republic Bank co-CEO Hafize Gaye Erkan joins the board of Marsh McLennan. Ombre hired Kimberly Griffith as head of science and Roma Qazi as head of growth. Tastemade's Rose Ferraro joins TMB, formerly Trusted Media Brands, as chief revenue officer. Britt Provost joins Siteimprove as chief human resources officer. Global Citizen promoted COO Liza Henshaw to president. Grace Isford, previously with Canvas Ventures, joins Lux Capital as principal.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- View from inside. Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez an insider now? The congresswoman talks to the New Yorker's David Remnick for a new interview series. Now that she's seen the "shit show" up close, she says, it can be "scandalizing" how major national decisions can be the result of groupthink or "self-delusion" among the country's lawmakers. The New Yorker
- On board. European board diversity got a boost last month when 11 Stoxx Europe 600 Price Index business—including some in the industrial sector—added women to their boards of directors. The highest-profile board shuffle came at CNH Industrial NV, where Catia Bastioli and Asa Tamsons became independent directors after the spinoff of the business's truck and bus division. Bloomberg
- Vroom vroom. Women can compete in NASCAR, but no woman is currently competing at the sport's highest levels; the last to race in the Daytona 500 was Danica Patrick in 2018. Now female NASCAR athletes have the support of a new sponsor, after Busch Light committed to sponsoring every woman in NASCAR who's over the age of 21. ABC News
ON MY RADAR
The women make Euphoria The Cut
Naomi Campbell opens up about motherhood on her own terms Vogue
What Nancy Meyers understands about love after age 50 The Atlantic
PARTING WORDS
"Maybe a young Black girl saw my race and she was like, 'Maybe I should try this.'"
-Erin Jackson, the Olympic speed skating gold medalist
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