How progressive institutions systematically silence their own change agents

“I hope you know that I would never run off and make a false allegation about you, especially given how our organization treats Black men.”

In the moments before Anne (we will call her Anne to protect her identity) said these words to me, I was trying to figure out how to end what had been supposed to be a very short phone call that had quickly become something else. In the months after, I would be left trying to figure out if her words—bizarrely out of place in the conversation we were having—had been a threat, or the guilty admission of something that couldn’t be undone.

The Formula

This is not a normal story. But it is a lot more common than you think. And it hinges on a formula. Once you understand it, you begin to see it everywhere: They hire you to do something different. They give you too few resources with which to do it. You succeed anyway. And that's when you become dangerous.

On a small level, this is the story of how assumptions create catastrophe. On a larger level, this is the story of how potential movements fail – and what we need to build instead.

"I thanked my colleagues of four years, stepped down from my volunteer board position to become staff, and took a 40% pay cut. People looked at me sideways."

It was mid-January, 2025. I know this because I was a week away from my first real vacation since I’d started the job nearly two years prior. I know that, because I was exhausted. Physically, mentally, professionally exhausted.

The only thing not tired in me was the part that knew what was possible. The part that owed this to those who’d been through much worse, or who were in a position to do much less.

When I was brought on, I’d been promised things. “You’ll have a team, maybe six to eight, or even ten people.” “Part of the thing with this hire is, I’m thinking of retiring soon. And I’m thinking about succession.” That was some of what the organization’s executive director had dangled to try and get me to bite. But it was this line that got me, “It’s not every day someone asks you to be their director of shifting trillions. Think about it.”

Something about the audacity of it. The potential to drive change at that scale I’d always known was the scale of change – not millions, not billions, trillions. Finally, a place where I could work at the level of systems rather than be stuck navigating them internally. Finally, an organization saw, as I did, that capital was not just the hoard of shiny things so many turn it into, but an important tool with outsized influence.

And so, I said yes. I thanked my colleagues (many of whom I knew I’d miss) of four years at my then job (“you’re leaving us to be director of what?”). I stepped down from my volunteer board position to become staff, and took a 40% pay cut. People looked at me sideways. And I got to work.

In the first few months on the job, I developed the vision, the strategy, the objectives for the work. When I’d been brought on the idea was nascent. “We need to shift trillions.” But there was no substance to that statement. The audacious rallying cry before I joined was, 'less financing of fossil fuels, more financing of green energy.' And be 'inclusive' in the process.

I built a strategy for shifting thinking, shifting dollars, and shifting power to transform the systems that pollute our lungs, our water, and our world. The systems that devalue people and entrench realities that shouldn’t be entrenched. That are ok with the fact that 90% of newborns are being born with plastic in their bloodstream, and that pour billions into tech-centric “climate solutions” while ignoring much more effective alternatives simply because of where they come from, and who stewards them.

Strangely, it was a tough sell. But even against internal headwinds, I was starting to get it done. Focused on corporate policy at major financial institutions, the connection between the environment and our health, and on those communities who face the worst of it and have offered alternatives to this reality for centuries or even millennia - I set a goal of contributing to the shift of $2 Trillion by 2028 from very harmful outcomes to less harmful ones.

The strategy was simple but untested - get major financial institutions to factor community health impacts into their investment and financing decisions. Once banks and pension funds had to actually account for what their fossil fuel financing did to local communities' health, the math changed. Dramatically.

Because it was so ambitious, and this organization had existed for such a long time, I figured we'd need years to get there. But by 2024, work I'd led had already driven changes that exceeded that $2 trillion goal several times over.

But it came at a price. The more I tried to do, and the more different it was, the more internal resistance I’d get. If I wanted to focus more on the toxic chemicals that harm our health, or fixing our broken food systems, they’d bring it back to solar panels alone. If I wanted to address how the same communities that face the worst environmental impacts had been overlooked as a source of solutions, or examine the role and ideas of the Global Majority, they’d ask if we even could. At one point, a board member said: this is too big. It kind of overwhelms me.

The Warning

And then, there were the comments. How some people were treated at the organization. At the time, I witnessed the only other Black employee (we’ll call him George) getting, what I observed as, berated on multiple live calls. I saw arguments. George had driven powerful outcomes at the organization. He was principled, incisive, and could handle himself. But the relationship, which predated my arrival, seemed tense.

"It wasn't even just the words themselves. It was the way he said them. It seemed gleeful."

So, one day early in my tenure, over lunch at a Peruvian restaurant near his house, I asked our executive director about their seemingly turbulent relationship. He said sometimes you had to use ‘hard power’ to get people in line. And that’s when he shared with me that he would be pressuring George to retire by the end of the next year. He told me he’d spoken to George, and George had confided that sometimes he might come across defensive from having grown up Black and gay in a major city. Then, seemingly reflecting on it, the executive director expressed to me that George’s problem was that George was just Black and gay, and he needed to go.

I went quiet. I expected him to say something more, or clean it up, but he didn’t. This was someone I had praised to others. Someone I had placed trust in. It wasn’t even just the words themselves. It was the way he said them. It seemed gleeful – like it was the pent-up thing he had wanted to say back to George, coming out over that lunch with me. He changed the subject, seemingly remembering who he was speaking to. But I never forgot those words. The retirement was announced soon after.

That day was a sign of what was to come. Over the following months, the executive director would make bizarre comments about former employees of his. There was the former CFO, who (I learned quickly) was Black, whose competence the executive director expressed dismissive views about while making unnecessarily racialized references to their background. There was the activist leader who, together with others, had raised concerns about racial bias, about which the executive director told me everyone had their biases – they just didn’t want to do any work.

It finally came to a head during a work trip to California. After the executive director described how he and others planned to use harassment allegations as a tool to remove a senior Black executive from leadership at our sister organization, I let my longstanding concerns be known. I told him it was disappointing how organizations like ours treated and talked about their Black leaders. Bringing them in, parading them around, and setting them up to fail. Using unscrupulous methods with them, rather than engaging in good faith. I wanted to carefully address what seemed to be a clear pattern of biased treatment and tiring statements, while extending the benefit of the doubt. He heard me out, but he didn’t stop.

Instead, things changed after that. Our check ins were shorter. His attention, scattered. Suddenly, the more successes I had, the more he asked. After exceeding the $2 Trillion goal, there was little fanfare. I was told to set an even higher, more ambitious goal. With no consideration for what the task required. Being me, I started thinking through exactly how to do that. Long after he’d signed off for the day, I’d be awake, working alone, organizing strategies, lining up the key people needed to make change happen. Traveling to win support, getting sick, repeat. At the same time, my grandmother got sick again and I began to send money home to support her. The meeting of personal and social responsibility sharpened my focus, but it didn’t change the facts: I was burning out.

And I was having to make it work on my own. When I revisited the support team conversation, I’d expected the executive director to make good on his promise of a team of “six, eight, even ten.” But now, when I asked for one or two key hires, suggesting we might never actually need more than five people total, the conversation was different. Maybe we don’t need anyone else. Maybe we could see if we could squeeze more work out of the one or two independent contractors we’d built good relationships with. I compromised – just one person, please. I developed a 5-year budget and plan for the whole thing.

"That's literally how I get through life. You just turn on the waterworks, and you can get people to do whatever you want."

That was how I'd met Anne. Her cover letter stood out for its specificity and deep research not only into the organization's work, but on my prior work and this specific role. Other candidates had stronger backgrounds, but the hiring committee insisted her enthusiasm for the role mattered more. So, when the executive director pressured us to cut some of the candidates I preferred, I deferred to their collective judgment.

There was one concern the hiring committee raised about Anne: confidence. I was advised that I would need to encourage and support her on that front. I made note of this, and in my first email welcoming her reminded her, “you belong here.”

It was the start of what would seem to be a positive, genuine working relationship. We didn’t have very much in common. But it turned out she was just a few years older than me, and would be casual in our conversations. I followed her lead.

When I asked for feedback, the responses were effusive. I remember on one occasion, I’d asked Anne what I could be doing better to support her. She’d told me that, not only was there "nothing problematic [I was] doing as a boss", but that I was the "best boss [she’d] ever had – and [she’d] had bad bosses." Instead, she told me, she worried sometimes she was letting me down.

Anne also had some idiosyncrasies. She would overshare quite a bit about her personal life and past. She would talk about her wife, their life together, their arguments. She would talk about celebrities she claimed to know intimate details about, and speculate or make claims about the personal lives of people we worked with. She would say some uncomfortable things, and ask a lot of questions about my own life. To try and help her feel less exposed, where it felt appropriate, I shared some of the unique aspects of my own story – my family, unique experiences, favorite authors – that I felt ok telling her. But I kept the most personal elements private – and she sometimes apologized for prying.

Still, the stories she shared made me more determined to support her. I created opportunities for Anne to present to our board. When she claimed someone was trying to poach her, I offered to advocate for split time. She declined - telling me she wasn't interested in working for anyone else.

Once, Anne came to me complaining about another director at the organization giving her a lot of work, and she asked for my help to get out of having to do it. She claimed that director had told Anne she would have to report to them as well. I said that was strange, and not at all the case. We workshopped how to handle the situation, and I told her I would stay out of it, but to let me know if she wanted me to step in. This would become a problem later.

The Weapon

At the same time, Anne seemed, in her way, to understand the nuances, and frustrations, of the racial dynamics at our workplace. After George left, I was the only Black person at the organization. Anne, who was white, would point that out during our calls, saying she wanted to do what she could—dotting I’s, crossing t’s—to ensure I was protected from some of those dynamics. She would raise concerns to me privately when others made oblivious statements, and, despite her lack of experience in the sector, notice how investments seemed harder to get approved when a firm’s leader was Black.

She would ask me what I thought. Once, when I expressed frustration at these realities, she suggested I play the sympathy card and just cry in front of the board. “That’s what I would do”, she told me. When I laughed and told her it wouldn’t work that way for me, she said she couldn’t imagine not having that “tool” available. “That’s literally how I get through life,” she told me. “You just turn on the waterworks, and you can get people to do whatever you want.” I would think about those words later.

This dynamic made itself most known during the hiring process for the foundation’s new corporate counsel, who would replace what had formerly been George’s role. Among other things, I’d been asked by our executive director to evaluate the candidates on whether they could understand issues related to equity and inclusion – something I did not want to be singled out to do, but at the same time, didn’t trust others on the committee, him most of all, to do fairly or effectively. While I hadn’t expected to note any issues, I observed them with one of the candidates, specifically on issues related to race and fairness. I warned our executive director that the candidate had demonstrated difficulty engaging with racial dynamics in the workplace – a critical competency for the role. He said he took note.

We got to three finalists. Of the three, one had scored the highest across most metrics. She was the top choice of nearly everyone on the six-person hiring committee. She was also Black – the only Black woman among the three finalists. After the third candidate withdrew from the process, the remaining finalists were both women: one who was highly qualified, high-scoring, preferred by the committee, and Black; and another who herself acknowledged she did not have the most relevant legal experience for the role, had exhibited concerning avoidance of key issues, and was white.

Sure enough, against the recommendation of the majority of the committee, the executive director chose to pass on that top-choice candidate and select the candidate I had specifically expressed reservations about regarding the very issue he had asked me to assess for. He even took the time to send out a document where he outlined his reasons for not hiring the committee’s preferred pick.

I expressed my frustration to Anne, who was eager to know my thoughts about how the hiring process for the foundation’s new counsel was going. When I told her the Foundation would likely pass on the candidate best equipped for the job, she’d said, without missing a beat, that of course this place would hire an under-qualified white woman over a highly qualified Black woman.

Like most of our team, Anne and I worked remotely in different states, and most of our interactions were over video meetings or the phone. As was the norm at the Foundation, Anne and I would speak or text casually about movies, music, books, politics (which touched every aspect of our work). She shared her love of oldies jazz music and Norah Jones, at one point, asking for time off to see Jones in concert. “Granted” I’d said. “At Last!” she wrote to me at the start of one email, when she finally heard back from someone we’d been waiting on. I texted her, “you starting an email with [‘At Last’] stuck this song right in my head,” with a link to the Etta James song. She replied she would try and sneak in a song reference in every email to me from then on “on the sly” just to see if I’d notice.

She would ask me for advice on health and wellness-related subjects, and explicitly listed them as topics she wanted my support or tips on. She said she loved that she could talk to me as a friend, and that I was someone she cared about. I did not respond in kind, because even casual as our discussions were, I wasn’t comfortable with those particular types of statements. She’d talk about having the TV on in the background while she worked during the day, on one occasion apologizing for being late to a meeting, telling me she’d gotten caught up watching a show we’d discussed that she enjoyed.

After she was hired, we saw each other in-person once during the six months I worked with her. It was during the organization’s signature event – which I’d conceived – in New York. Our executive director had asked me to go on a walk with him through Central Park to catch up, where he made those uncomfortable references to that former CFO who worked for him. During the walk, I suggested I might go on the same walk with Anne the next day, if she was up for it. He said it was a great idea, especially when you don’t work together in an office, and that I should try and prioritize it. When I invited Anne, she suggested she would love to, though she also didn’t want me thinking she was trying to get out of doing her work. I reaffirmed there was no pressure either way, but she shouldn’t feel busy after a strong showing that week, at least not on my account.

She seemed to appreciate that, and, that Friday morning, we went on a walk through Central Park. As we walked, Anne asked to extend our time together several times, stretching it to about three hours. She asked for my perspective on a myriad of subjects, and we brainstormed about projects we were working on. She told me she wished others could witness these conversations—to see how 'human' and 'supportive' I was ‘as a leader’. We took a cab back to an intersection near our respective hotels. As we wrapped up, she asked for a hug. And then we went our separate ways.

Perhaps this warm working relationship was the reason there was only ever one point of tension: professional feedback.

"I'm not afraid to take drastic action to protect my job."

I began to realize that, on the few instances where something did go wrong, Anne would not react well if I said anything – anything – about it. And for Anne specifically, who our hiring committee had said needed a confidence boost, I thought, eggshells.

So, when I say “feedback”, I mean, “hey. I noticed that didn’t go according to plan. Is there anything I could have done differently to make what we needed clearer?”

But the response was often not a comparable one – and it certainly didn’t lack confidence. There were incendiary escalations. Questions about job loss would be thrown around. Suggestions that errors were just a different approach, or, more bizarrely, “creative” differences. In the process, no actual acknowledgment of the challenges I’d raise.

When this would happen, I’d drop it. It was minor. But on one occasion, the problem was large enough, and the response unreasonable enough, that I figured I’d need to recalibrate us somehow. I thought I’d maybe opted for too non-confrontational, too nice, to the point where we couldn’t even have a conversation about minor issues without Anne becoming, what came across as, aggressively defensive.

So, after insisting she take time offline during the holidays (she’d planned to do a ton of work that didn’t need doing, and I’d said “please, be offline the next two weeks”) I set out to prepare a simple conversation to address it. I wrote down some of what I planned to cover:

‘You’ve been doing some great work so far [specific examples of big wins]. One minor issue I’ve noticed is when something doesn’t go right, and I try to bring it up, you sometimes respond in a way that can come across as stubborn or avoidant or dismissive. And I want to understand if there’s anything I’m doing, in my communication style or otherwise, that makes you feel uncomfortable having those types of improvement discussions, or if I’m misreading the situation entirely.’

I asked more experienced mentors for advice on having improvement discussions with people they’d supervised. Overthinking, I turned to my partner for a sensitivity check, asking her how she would feel talking through those issues with a male supervisor. I considered how I would have wanted to receive feedback.

January was weird. We were returning from the holidays, and I’d set out to start by paying attention to our team’s systems, thinking about how we’d grow. I started by asking Anne if she had updated communication preferences, as I’d noticed she’d ranked texts lower than others had on a recent team document. She’d clarified she didn’t mind texts so long as they were coming from me, but – and this is where things got strange – she worried she was sending too many messages to me, and wanted to know if my partner would grow concerned about seeing a woman’s name on my phone.

I’d laughed at first, thinking it was some kind of awkward joke. She obviously knows who you are, I’d thought, and, more importantly, you’re openly, outspokenly lesbian, and married? But most importantly, what is the implication, here – this is getting weird?

Rather than share my concern, I asked her why she would think something like that. And when she said casually, “I had a boss once who got a divorce over me,” I couldn’t help but feel… offended? Confused? Bewildered? I replied, “we don’t have that kind of relationship.” I had a second incredulous chuckle at the idea, then said “sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing” hoping to defuse things. She said, “it’s good to laugh. It means you’re happy.”

Only days later, when there was a moment for the feedback discussion, I asked Anne if I could give her a call, and she said yes. Once on, I launched into the intro I’d practiced. Calmly, carefully. I thought, if we could resolve this ongoing, but minor issue through a single conversation, we could get on with the work. But I didn’t get very far before Anne cut in with, “what is this really about?” and “am I being fired?”

Frustrated, I tried explaining again it was meant to be a reciprocal conversation. A way to address together an area we would need to be effective in to succeed as a small team. That it was literally my job to ensure we were successful and address challenges. I even suggested I could pass any feedback I had to someone else, who could pass it to her, if that made these discussions easier. But it was useless:

Do we need someone else in the room?...

…Would you feel more comfortable with someone else in the room?

Only if it’s a termination discussion…

…Again, it’s not about termination, at all. It’s just a conversation about a really minor but important area of improvement…

“I’m not afraid to take drastic action to protect my job.”

Only a month or so earlier, she’d texted me an unsolicited picture of herself, her wife, and their new car. She was excited. And, given her background, it might have been difficult for her to get a similar job if she lost this one. I understood. But it didn’t change the fact that she wouldn’t accept feedback from me, no matter how I gave it.

After I had to end the call – way longer than intended trying to explain its very simple purpose – for another meeting, I tried again the next day.

We made what seemed like better progress this time. She admitted that part of her strong reaction had been driven by resentment about something else. Days prior, I’d put the brakes on a separate project we’d been working on, saying it still needed some work. I clarified the pause was an assessment of the project’s status, not her personal work ethic. That it just needed some tweaks – not that it wasn’t valuable. Anne told me that she’d been offended ‘as an artist’. That she knew she had made a lot of mistakes over the past several months, some of them big ones, and if she were in my shoes, she would fire herself. I reinforced to Anne that, overall, she was doing a great job, and told her:

“I hope you know I would never blindside you by firing you like that. You would know months in advance if anything needed that much improvement.”

And she told me:

“And I hope you know I would never run off and make a false allegation about you, especially given how our organization treats Black men.”

It was the last phone call we’d ever have.

The Betrayal

"Their own investigation determined that, from a legal standpoint, I hadn't actually engaged in harassment or creation of a hostile work environment."

The next week, I left for my vacation. The Sunday night before I was meant to come back, I was locked out of my work systems. It was a week and a half after that last conversation with Anne, and only two weeks into the new corporate counsel’s tenure. The same counsel I’d expressed those concerns about. Our new counsel informed me (by unsolicited text, no less) that I was under investigation, and subsequently sent a letter alleging I had caused harm to Anne by engaging in conduct that might be harassment and the creation of a hostile work environment.

I was devasted. Ironically, at first, not for myself. But because I wondered if in all my efforts to be supportive, accommodating – I could have somehow missed something major. Was Anne ok?

The corporate counsel warned me I was not to talk to anyone. Not Anne. Not any other staff. Not the board members who’d been my former peers. Not outside partners or affiliates of the organization. I wasn’t even allowed to go places where those people might show up. And that’s exactly where the problems began.

The investigation was brief, and broad. The questions made little sense for an investigation that had seemed so serious. Did you ever have discussions about dental hygiene? Did you ever claim not to like colonizers? Do you have any hobbies? Tell me about New York.

When I asked the investigator what I was being investigated for, the investigator claimed not to know specifics or why I was denied access to evidence that could support my case. He kept deferring to the corporate counsel, seeming to suggest that she was the one in charge of running the investigation (which seemed to directly contradict what they described I could expect from the process). Indeed, our corporate counsel informed me I should reach out to her, and no one else, with questions or concerns. Following their rules, I tried to ask the corporate counsel for more detail. I was shut down. I was alarmed.

So, I reached out to some lawyers, several of whom usually represented organizations doing the investigating. I was advised by more than one that this series of events did not seem normal. I reached out again to the corporate counsel, this time expressing my concerns about the process and scope of the investigation and asking to check in with the executive director. I was starting to wonder whether any of this was real. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to follow her instructions or I would risk termination, and that I could speak to no one about what was happening.

A nagging feeling. What if this is about what I raised to the executive director? What if the corporate counsel found out I had advocated against her hire? What if it’s both? Who could I tell, who could I ask, if the corporate counsel was the only person I was allowed to talk to?

After agonizing days of waiting, in silence, I was informed that the results of the investigation were in: it was time to discuss next steps. I was relieved. Finally, we could move on.

But things got weirder. Two minutes before the ‘discussion of next steps’, they sent me notice of their alleged findings. Suddenly, what had happened started to seem very ugly. My worries for Anne dissipated. My expectations of clarity vanished.

Their own investigation determined that, from a legal standpoint, I hadn't actually engaged in harassment or creation of a hostile work environment. So instead, they said I had engaged in sexual harassment and creation of a hostile work environment according to their definition.

Their smoking guns?

I’d once texted Anne a link to what they described as “a song about finally finding love” (that reference to “At Last!” by Etta James). I’d forwarded a song, “Take Off Your Cool”, an acoustic, swear-word-free collaboration by Norah Jones and Outkast – at Anne’s request (she’d been surprised there was a Norah Jones song she hadn’t heard). They misattributed the song to Andre 3000 alone, erasing Norah Jones - which suggests where their eyes were.

I’d mentioned a book by Octavia Butler that they singled out from among at least ten other fiction and non-fiction books with various themes and topics. Anne herself had referenced it numerous times, and claimed, after reading, she was a ‘huge fan’. As with the creators of the music they singled out, Butler was Black, and most of the other authors were not.

Then there were the lies. The twisting.

The investigation cited the very act of texting after work as evidence of boundary violations. It didn't mention that the executive director often texted staff late at night, with everything from unsolicited photos to memes to music videos. It didn’t mention the 30+ text messages in a row Anne once sent me with COVID tips and online shopping links.

It cited sharing music as inappropriate. It didn't mention the unsolicited Spotify playlist Anne made and shared with me—which included several tracks marked explicit, or the violent and graphic shows she had discussed or suggested, or the numerous times she had overshared or pried in uncomfortable ways. It didn’t mention how, at the Foundation, there was literally a segment in our mandatory all-staff meetings for talking about book or movie recommendations, during which our executive director had once recommended the graphic film Poor Things, and had jokingly warned us not to watch it with our moms.

The investigation reframed our entire New York interaction: it claimed I had ‘violated Anne’s personal time’ (on a working Friday) by going on that one walk through Central Park. The same walk the executive director had encouraged. The walk Anne extended, the praise she offered—all became evidence of my alleged wrongdoing. At an organization that actively advocates for getting people outdoors, no less.

That director Anne complained to me about, the one giving Anne extra work that Anne asked me to help her get out of? Offering Anne support apparently meant I was isolating her. Never mind the dozens of people she coordinated with regularly, my making sure she got time in front of our board and leadership, or her standing meetings with other directors, including that one.

Conversations we literally never had – about my personal life, about being mature – somehow became bizarre focal points. All I could think was, how did I end up through this looking glass? How can anyone use such extreme, loaded terms as “sexual harassment” and “hostile work environment” and “caused harm” for a one-time discussion of jazz music, and a literal walk in the park? And why was I singled out and investigated for things that others engage in with impunity, or are literally built into the organization’s operations?

The answer, of course, was in the history of the institution, and the timeline of events. The investigation had launched sometime within the first two weeks of the tenure of the corporate counsel I’d advocated against. It had also begun sometime after my first and only tense discussion with Anne about performance.

But most importantly, it set off after I’d begun raising concerns about the Foundation’s hiring practices, management practices, and working environment to the executive director. And after I’d tried to speak to him directly, respectfully, about things he was saying and doing.

Sure enough, as I signed on to the call about ‘next steps’, the executive director and corporate counsel ambushed me. They wanted me to sign a release of claims and non-disclosure agreement which covered anything and everything, then resign for ‘personal reasons’. They said I could sign – and they’d pay me a severance – or else I would be fired.

What it meant: Not just the investigation – but all the concerns I’d previously raised, everything I’d been subjected to – I’d have to be silent about them. My partner, who’d heard the call, would later tell me, “It sounded like [the executive director] didn’t know you. He sounded somewhere between cold and hateful.” What I didn’t tell her was, the way she’d heard him talk to me, the callousness of his words, I’d heard it before. That day in the diner, when he talked about George.

Up until that point, no one had notified me, complained to me, or even asked me about the kinds of things they were alleging. While their own policies listed multiple approaches to handling situations like these, including counseling, separation, and other discipline – they isolated me, kept me in the dark, and then went straight for the most extreme, final option.

And I would come to learn that, in addition to the corporate counsel’s oversight, the investigation had relied on interviews with just four people: Anne, me, the director she'd complained to me about, and the executive director. They skipped the people who worked closest with me or who had actually seen Anne and me interact regularly. Based on this, they somehow found violations they couldn't legally define.

Perhaps the most telling part of it all was what happened after. When I offered to show them evidence that disputed their conclusions, they said they didn’t want to see it. When I raised concerns about several aspects of what they claimed that were demonstrably false, they said the investigation was final. And when I asked if I could at least see how they arrived at their own conclusions, they said no.

This was a self-described progressive institution, with $200 million in assets, afraid to look at their own role in entrenching the systems they claimed to want to change. Ironically, their own actions leading up to, during, and following the investigation were a direct violation of the same policy documents they had cited for my termination.

Naturally, I refused to sign it. Not knowing who I could trust, I blew the whistle to a select group of board members. People who had seen my work. Spent time with me in person. People who, I thought, would know better. I documented what I could gather without my work equipment. Surely if they knew what I had been battling internally at the organization, its discriminatory practices, and the risks they were creating, they would take some action.

Silence, mostly. Some reached out. Others would go on to benefit from my departure, taking on high-profile speaking roles and interviews I’d been scheduled for – and using words strangely similar to mine to amplify themselves.

Meanwhile, after refusing the NDA and reaching out, I was terminated. After nearly three years of service, and, conveniently, about a month before what would have been my two-year mark as an employee.

But they weren’t done. For my having reached out to the board, the corporate counsel escalated her threats. She sent emails to my lawyer attacking me and making bizarre claims. She even threatened to fire me a second time.

"Suddenly, the same organization that had spent its recent years talking about diversity and justice and change had no publicly-facing Black employees or leaders."

Then, the corporate counsel began participating in panels on DEI, where she highlighted her credentials by describing herself as being from a blue dot in a red state. The Black leader the executive director had suggested he and others planned to use harassment allegations to get rid of was removed by his board. And suddenly, the same organization that had spent its recent years talking about diversity and justice and change had no publicly-facing Black employees or leaders. Quietly, carefully, we’d all been replaced.

The Pattern

As I reached out privately to my network for counsel, a pattern began to emerge. This had happened to all of us, or someone we knew.

"I spoke with countless other people with stories just like mine. Women. Men. At various ages and stages. All of them betrayed in some way by organizations that brought them on to drive change, and then punished them for trying."

The highly effective executive ousted by her board in a story eerily similar to mine.

She’d had stellar reviews. She’d transformed her organization’s approach, and put a spotlight on human rights and racial justice. She came back from a much-needed break to a suspension and an internal investigation.

When she asked what she was being investigated for, they would not give her specifics. The words “HR-related” were used. She’d never had any issues at the organization, but the way she was treated seemed to suggest something serious, and no one would tell her what.

When I spoke with her, she said, “They take credit for the work and for what you’ve built. But the one intelligence they never have, is lived experience. They get it as close as they can to what looks like authentic, but when it’s time to actually reflect that authenticity in the work, they can’t. They say they are serious about tackling these issues, when in reality, they aren’t. Because we wouldn’t be in the reality we’re in right now if they were.”

Like me, they demanded she sign an NDA, and then she was out. But, she says, they didn’t stop there. As she tried to rebuild, she would hear that they were still speaking about her negatively. And when she tried to move on, to create change in other ways, they would want a say in how she did it. It’s a trend she says she’s seen across the industry.

“When it’s time [for these organizations] to actually live their promises with people of color, they abandon all their claims. They label us radical. They say we’re inexperienced. They watch us. They threaten us. And then they replace us with white people. And when you look for their track record of support for our communities, for living up to the funding or investments or changes they touted, you find none.”

Then there was the senior leader at a non-profit. He had an employee who was underperforming to the point where she didn’t even show up to work for about 40 days. Seeing a need to address this, he tried to work with her, carefully, to meet expectations. The employee claimed his attempts to address performance (including texts like “hey – are you coming in today?”) were harassment and creating an unsafe space for her. The organization took his keys and locked him out of his work systems. They brought in an outside investigator. According to him, the investigator seemed hostile to his case, but even after grilling him, she ended up concluding he had done nothing wrong.

He was able to prove the allegations to be untrue, and their own investigation could not find wrongdoing. But still, he lost his job. More importantly, the experience upended his life and executive career. He’d had to share 50+ screenshots of exchanges between himself and this employee to clear his name. The employer’s evidence? A statement from the underperforming employee.

After years of strong performance, supporting his peers, and having never had any issues like this, he found himself starting over. A father and husband, he told me his main thought was, how would he take care of, and explain this to, his family, after so suddenly, shockingly, losing this job?

There were the investment professionals. There were the organizers. Even a therapist, who broke character to share that my experience was similar to what had happened to her, and to her son, in separate events.

I spoke with countless other people with stories just like mine. Women. Men. At various ages and stages. All of them betrayed in some way by organizations that brought them on to drive change, and then punished them for trying. And if you look around today – on your feed, in the news – you can see it. It’s public. The implied slurs: see, they can’t handle leadership. They don’t have the judgment. The integrity. They were improper. Unprofessional. Too rich. Too poor. Too loud. Too quiet. Always, Black.

That is not simply a failure of fairness. It is also the very thing preventing change.

At the same time, the pattern is not limited to these instances. It’s just different. I've spoken with people from all walks of life who were purged from their institutions under dodgy circumstances. Trusting professionals falsely accused by subordinates who wanted their jobs, or betrayed by colleagues. New leaders scapegoated by dysfunctional organizations and unfair investigations. People who discovered the hard way that their clarity had become a threat.

The stories I heard also reinforced how the institutional weapons deployed varied by target. Black women would face compounded versions of all of them – and the more they rose, the worse it would get. Harassment accusations got weaponized against Black men who were painted as ‘hostile’ or ‘unsafe’ for being present. Women of all backgrounds would be labelled ‘bossy’ or ‘difficult’ for behavior that made some of their male peers 'strong leaders.' The words 'culture fit' would eliminate anyone too high-achieving, too unique, or too unwilling to perform for institutional comfort.

And you already know this. None of this is new, or abstract. These are just silent realities. We were all told different stories about why we had to go, but the formula was the same: Hire for change, punish for achieving it.

Even anonymized, in this small way, I wanted to amplify some of these stories. Because this deserves to be recognized. Because when institutions behave like this, they fail people who could actually drive change. Intentionally, at times. Stupidly, at others. Often both.

The story they tell the public is often very, very far from the truth. Lives are ruined, careers destroyed, and these institutions go on like it’s nothing. They parade around talking about DEI and transformation. They convince you that the problem is external, that their hands are tied, that they are doing what’s best. They’ll refuse change and fight you if you try.

When they do this, these institutions make the world a worse place. They raise billions of dollars to solve problems they are structurally incapable of addressing – but that they could if they let their change agents work. And that failure isn't just harming employees – it's preventing the change these organizations were founded to create.

Frustrated program officers will see millions wasted on performative programs while real solutions get ignored. Well-meaning funders will pour their capital into organizations that spend it on everything but solutions – more convenings, more polling, more plans – while the problems they claim to solve get worse. The tragedy isn't even the waste. It's that real solutions exist, often for a fraction of the cost, but these institutions aren’t equipped to recognize them. Because they push out the people who are.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Institutions fail us when they choose comfort over change, politics over purpose, silence over solutions. When they confuse bias for prudence. When they hire people to drive transformation, then punish them for thinking differently.

There are many people working at organizations like these that have recognized this problem and are doing it differently. New leadership fighting for real solutions despite institutional resistance. Board members asking hard questions. Staff pushing for new approaches at great personal risk. They deserve not only applause, but to be learned from. The truth isn't that everyone in these institutions is 'complicit'—it's that the structure of these organizations, the pattern too many decision-makers cling to, defer to, wrap themselves in—is fighting against them.

The deeper question for those organizations that seek to create impact is: will you perpetuate the pattern, or will you break it?

Because there has never been a more important time to build something different.

Thank you for reading. I have deep thoughts about what should be the alternative, and in the coming months, I will share those in an update. In the meantime – if you’ve experienced something similar, reach out. Share your story. And keep going.