Name: How Sexual Harassment Can Be Avoided in the Workplace
Uploaded: 2017-07-18
Duration: 6 min 19 s
Description: Evertoon’s CEO Niniane Wang and New York Times’ Katie Benner speak out against sexual harassment in the workplace.

Niniane Wang is in the audience, I see you. And Niniane was the very first woman to agree to come forward to speak about her experience with Justin Caldbeck. [ APPLAUSE ] And for those of you who don't know, Niniane works very hard to. Convince other women to come forward as well and get them comfortable with it. And I know you've been. Nanine's gonna be speaking tomorrow. So please listen to that. But I know you've been thinking a lot about how we changed things in retrospect. Yes. I think that people are very focused courage and bravery, and I've heard so many people say, that must have taken a lot of courage. So there was courage involved but there was also a lot of hard work before and afterwards. I think that as just like work, you have a goal, in this case my goal was to get a predator out of a position of power and then there steps that you would do to achieve that goal. Evidence. Creating a timeline, a pattern. Establishing enough logical evidence that when anyone looks at it they will reach the same conclusion. And we did the article and then we a lot of work to contact LPs. I asked the other accusers to contact LPs. We got contacted by more accusers who I then connected to the reporters. So we actually did probably I think I did 100 hours of work before and after the article. And people keep saying why is this time different. And I do think the macro climate plays into it, but also the amount of work we did also affected things. You also have an interesting idea about. How we move forward. What's a solution to that. How do we make sure this doesn't happen to more women? Well there a lot of things that I think we should do. I think that the long term solution that people have said is that in hyper masculine situations such as police forces, military, that harassment will gradually occur. So The long term solution is actually to get more diversity as people have discussed. I think in a shorter term having a place where people can report harassment is very important. So, I have heard many founders say to me, I have been harassed by multiple investors but I have to keep working in the tech industry but I have never heard anyone say I've been groped by multiple doctors but I have to keep going to the hospital. And that is another situation, where there's a person in a position of authority and a person in a very vulnerable situation, but there is not harassment. So, I think we can learn from the medical industry. They have a medical board. When someone is harassed, they can immediately call that number. And it does not take ten years of concerted effort to expose a doctor who's been harassing people. So I think that there's a lot that we can learn from that situation. If there's a third party independent person who can investigate claims and make recommendations That's much better than what's happening right now, when the third party is journalist. There's no place to report harassment of adversaries of people who have to go to the press. And as per every one of them because week after week, they are about headlines and the women have to relieve their harassment in public. So if there were third party they can actually call, investigate and recommend solutions. I think that that will go a long way. Is Katie Banner here? Hi. So I want to talk a little bit about the media because I was chasing the story, Katie was chasing the story, fortune was chasing the story for a very long time and it was very difficult story to do because You have to convince women to come forward. And I'm curious, Katie. Katie reported, had a great story in the New York Times where she moved this story forward. And I'm curious, Katie, what the experience of doing that was like for you. So one of the interesting things about it. Is that the follow- up story that I did was in some ways easier to do than the story just about Justin called back. Because the silence had been broken. And I think that people really underestimated how powerful it is to break the silence. So In the couple of weeks since that story, I've gotten a lot of pushback from investors and people I really like, saying, the problem with what you did is that now there's going to be a witch hunt. And none of these men will meet with women anymore because it's too dangerous for them. They have to cut women out of the process, essentially because now You've created an environment when no man can comfortably get a drink with a woman. Now, that's very, sorry, they want me to move into the light. [ LAUGH ] That seems a little bit Mike Pence- y to me, so I don't [ LAUGH ] Know if I like that as an idea. [ LAUGH ] But, [ APPLAUSE ] But the reality of the situation is that the opposite is true and what I keep asking these men and even some of the women who said the same thing is by being silent and protecting all these guys, did you get to parity? Did you get the job you wanted? Did you get the CEO spot you deserve? Did you get funding? Because if the answer is yes, than you're right. Keep it all a secret. But if the answer is no, and I think like, less than 5 % of GP's are women, seems like a small number, not a lot of women are getting funding. I have a friend who's an age old investor, who told me that of his portfolio, the women led companies that fail, it's because they don't get follow on funding, not because they are bad companies. These are really Really drastic things, and apparently, keeping things a secret, my God. [ LAUGH ] Please, we wanna see you, we want to see you. And apparently keeping things a secret didn't change the system. So I think that one of the things we're going to see the press do is try to continue to look at the story from a variety of angles, not just These are people who do bad things. Cuz I think we're already seeing VC firms take action within their own firms. They've been two, AngelList and I forgot the other one, who said they've done an internal investigation and they think something has gone wrong. So I don't think I mean, I think that that process has begun. I think for the press it's also, what are the structural issues that allow harassment to persist? Why can't LPs and potential employees and potential portfolio companies make the best decisions possible? Well, they don't have all the information they need. So I do think the story will continue. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Evertoon’s CEO Niniane Wang and New York Times’ Katie Benner speak out against sexual harassment in the workplace.