Tinder has fired several employees who were involved in the lawsuit against Match Group and IAC, including VP of Marketing and Communications Rosette Pambakian.
The employees were originally placed on administrative leave at the end of August, but a Match Group spokesperson has now confirmed they have left the company because they were “unable to fulfill their job responsibilities.”
While the dating app hasn’t officially named anyone who has been let go, The Verge obtained an email discussion between Pambakian and Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg.
In her message, Pambakian claimed she was fired because she filed a sexual harassment report against former Tinder CEO Greg Blatt. She also expressed her belief that Tinder conducted a “sham investigation”, which found no misconduct had taken place, in order to protect Blatt.
However, Ginsberg replied and reminded the former employee of the company’s position; that she made no such allegations and it was actually Tinder Founder, and fellow plaintiff, Sean Rad who brought the incident up.
Pambakian stated she wasn’t interviewed as part of the investigation process, but Ginsberg asserted that she was, on at least two separate occasions.
Instead, Ginsberg argued that the real reason that she was fired was because Match Group tried to contact her, but could only communicate with her attorneys.
Ginsberg wrote: “Unfortunately, it’s impossible for you to do your work at Tinder if all communications related to your job have to go through your lawyers.”
She also claimed that all of Pambakian’s company devices had been “coincidentally lost or damaged just before [she] decided to sue the company.”
Pambakian was forced to withdraw from the lawsuit, along with three other plaintiffs, after it was revealed she had signed an arbitration agreement, meaning the dispute had to be settled privately. However, she asserts that she still “vigorously supports” the lawsuit.
Later on in her email, Pambakian noted that it was fortuitous she had been fired the day before her remaining stock options had vested, making them inaccessible.
In her response, the Match Group CEO reassured her that her “options have already been accelerated, and should be exercisable in your account”.
The lawsuit stemmed from some of Tinder’s earliest employees claiming that Match Group and IAC had undervalued the company, making their stock options worth a lot less than they had first anticipated.
Ginsberg also rejected Pambakian’s protests that she was pressured to sign a non-disparagement agreement which would’ve stopped her from talking publicly about the procedures.
Ginsberg concluded her email by saying that she is free to have an in person meeting, if Pambakian wants to have a productive dialogue about any further issues.
Read more here.
UPDATE 21/12/2018: A representative of Pambakian’s has contacted GDI with additional details regarding the case. At the time of writing, only the first two emails below had been seen by GDI. Some language in the body of the article has been tweaked accordingly.
Find the email exchange between Mandy Ginsberg and Rosette Pambakian here:
Dear Mandy,
Six years ago I wrote the very first press release for Tinder. Since then, I’ve poured my heart and soul into this company and helped grow it into a global phenomenon and top-grossing app. I was the youngest and longest-standing female executive at the company. I love Tinder. And I love my colleagues. But you have now fired me from a company I was so proud to build in blatant retaliation for joining a group of colleagues and Tinder’s original founding members in a lawsuit against Match and IAC, standing up for our rights, calling out the company’s CEO Greg for sexual misconduct, and confronting the company about covering up what happened to me.
While I truly hoped that decency and professionalism would prevail and that you would let me return to work, I knew that was probably unlikely when I was placed on leave the very day the lawsuit was filed and you continued to defend the actions of the executive that I spoke out against. Rather than acknowledge the truth and condemn his actions, you chalked it up it to “bad judgment.” To make matters worse, you told the world that a sham investigation (in which I was never even interviewed) determined the assault was some sort of “consensual cuddling”—as if there could by anything consensual about a CEO groping his subordinate in front of other employees after making sexually explicit comments throughout the evening of a company holiday party. No company that has faced allegations like this has gone to such lengths to protect one of its own – it’s truly despicable.
Since being placed on leave, I’ve been subjected to ongoing intimidation and retaliation clearly designed to pressure me into resigning—from immediately removing my name from my office and converting it into a conference room, to trying to coerce me into turning over my private and personal data on my phone. Though I can think of no other company that has actually fired the woman who made sexual assault allegations against an executive—the company’s actions here, including firing me just one day before my remaining options vest, are totally consistent with the way you have circled the wagons around him from day one.
Was the board aware that the company would publicly blame the victim?
When I refused to sign a non-disparagement agreement presented to me by HR, which would have prevented me from speaking publicly about my experience in exchange for compensation, Match snuck an arbitration clause into its employees’ most recent compliance acknowledgements, causing me, Jonathan, James and Josh to have to withdraw from the lawsuit. Know that my former Tinder colleagues and I still vigorously support that lawsuit — IAC and Match cheated us out of what we were promised and rightfully earned in exchange for building Tinder into Barry Diller’s most valuable business. As the lawsuit progresses the evidence will emerge and the world will see how IAC and Match plotted against their employees and rewarded misconduct.
I never imagined that I’d be pushed out of my company for standing up for what is right. But if that is the cost of being on the right side of history, I’ll pay it. As a woman CEO, I truly hope that you reconsider the safety of your remaining female workforce and allow Tinder and other Match owned companies to follow in the footsteps of Uber, Facebook and Google in eliminating forced arbitration for sexual misconduct claims. We deserve better.
Rosette
Dear Rosette,
I’m glad you reached out to me directly and I would like to take this opportunity to clarify a few points, because there seems to be a very real disconnect here that I truly want to fix.
You were not terminated because you reported Greg for sexual harassment. You couldn’t have been, as you never reported Greg for sexual harassment. When Sean Rad brought the subject up nearly five months later, right after the valuation process commenced, it was immediately and thoroughly investigated by the Board, independently without any involvement from Greg, which concluded that no sexual harassment occurred. I was not the CEO at the time, but I know that you were interviewed on at least two separate occasions and you never alleged sexual harassment.
On the topic of sexual harassment at Tinder, you know how seriously reports are taken. You yourself reported two other male colleagues, whom Sean Rad hired, and they were very quickly dismissed. Clearly, it was taken very seriously given the company terminated those individuals. More importantly though, Greg is no longer here. I am. And I promise you, we do not retaliate against anyone who reports sexual harassment. Your position was never at risk due to any sexual harassment complaints. I wanted to find a way to keep you employed at Tinder.
As explained in the letter we sent you, you were terminated because it was not possible for you to fulfill the duties and responsibilities of your role as Tinder’s spokesperson for a number of reasons, including your public position against the company over a valuation process. We also recently asked you to come to the office for a meeting with the HR department to discuss work-related activities and policies and were told that we can only contact you through your attorneys. Unfortunately, it’s impossible for you to do your work at Tinder if all communications related to your job have to go through your lawyers. As it relates to your personal information, any suggestion that we have been trying to access it is just not true. Like any company, we’ve asked for you, and all other employees involved, to return company laptops, phones and other devices to us. And unfortunately, we couldn’t retrieve a number of company devices from you and the others since you claimed that they were coincidentally all lost or damaged just before you decided to sue the company.
There are two last points I want to make: on the point about your equity, those options have already been accelerated, and should be exercisable in your account, along with the other equity awards that have vested since August. However, on the arbitration agreements, there is no NDA in them and we never tried to force you to sign a non-disparagement agreement. You’re free to talk about anything publicly that you’d like. You have already done so and that’s your prerogative. But the arbitration agreement is attached again. As you already know from when you signed it, it’s clearly labeled “Agreement to Arbitrate.”
I am a strong female advocate and have said to the women in the organization that as a female CEO in charge, I have zero tolerance for bad behavior and I am very much invested in every single employee’s success. If you’d like to discuss any of the above, or have a productive dialogue, I am here and will make myself available for an in person meeting. Just let me know.
Mandy
Mandy,
I’ll take it for granted that the false claims in your email are because you were provided lies by the powers that be at Match and IAC when you assumed the position of CEO from Greg. But here’s a tip – if you were not made aware of all of the facts before publicly defending him, then you should re-evaluate the people advising you on company matters.
I’ll meet with you for a productive dialogue only if you’re prepared to truthfully and accurately address the following topics and answer some important questions:
Why do you claim that I did not report the sexual assault when the facts are clear that I told human resources and your in-house legal counsel how Greg groped me after the 2016 holiday party in front of two other Tinder colleagues? I also shared with them how earlier in the night he told me that he “gets hard every time” he looks at me. Imagine that fact was hidden from you, as well?
Did your bosses lie to you about the non-disparagement agreement that HR head Lisa Nelson asked me to sign in my office in exchange for compensation? She described what Greg did to me as a “terrible ordeal” (her words) and asked me to say “no comment or something we draft for you” if I was ever asked about it by the media or within the company. I refused – in writing. Happy to forward that email to you in case your team somehow forgot to inform you of this fact, too.
I truly hope you were just misinformed and that you did not knowingly make up these lies about me and say them publicly and to the company. That would go against being the strong female advocate you claim to be.
Let’s meet soon as you suggest. I am eager to hear how the leadership at Match and IAC allowed this to snowball into public victim-blaming and how anyone calling the shots there would think that misinforming their new CEO about a serious company matter was somehow setting you up for success.
Rosette