Landen Zumwalt, Grindr’s former Head of Communications, has compared working at the gay dating app to working in Donald Trump’s White House.
During his tenure, there were reportedly a number of employees who didn’t agree with the way the company was being run and wanted to move on. However, there was uncertainty about what the consequences of their departure might be, so they kept quiet.
Speaking to Los Angeles Magazine, Zumwalt said: “There was this small group of people inside Grindr who wanted to leave, but we were too fearful of what might happen if we did. I used to balk when I heard that from Trump people, and I still do, but that was a reality I was living with day-to-day.”
He left at the end of 2018, having spent just seven months in the role, after Grindr President Scott Chen made a controversial statement about same-sex marriage.
An open member of the LGBTQ community, Zumwalt resigned and explained that he wouldn’t compromise his professional integrity by defending a comment that goes against everything he believes in.
During his short stint, he helped to launch the Kindr initiative, a promotional campaign and new set of guidelines that aimed to make the platform more inclusive.
Grindr has been criticised in the past for not having many LGBTQ people in senior positions.
An anonymous current employee also told Los Angeles Magazine: “Over time, as people have left, they’ve been replaced by straight people. Today Scott likes to use the phrase: We’re not an LGBT company anymore. We serve LGBT users.”
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