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A former World Economic Forum employee has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Swiss nonprofit that runs the high-profile conference in Davos each year and its chairman, Klaus Schwab.
Former employee Topaz Smith, a Black woman, claims she was denied job opportunities because of her race and gender during her nearly two years at Forum. The lawsuit, filed Monday in New York, alleges that Forum “has taken an approach that ignores anti-discrimination laws and has permitted a hostile atmosphere for female and Black employees.”
At one point, Smith claimed, a white manager told him to think of his boss, who was also white, as his “master.” Face-to-face opportunities at Davos are typically reserved for white employees, Smith said.
Smith claims she was fired in retaliation for giving birth to her child in February, and that the forum replaced her with a “non-pregnant white employee” while on maternity leave.
“Forum and Schwab have long since been held accountable for their horrific actions of sexualizing and objectifying women,” Topaz’s lawyer, Valdi Rickle, a partner at the Wigdor law firm, said in a statement. “Forum and Schwab should understand that this type of discrimination is completely illegal in the United States.”
A spokesman for the forum did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit follows other allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment at the nonprofit, which hosts a global conference each January. The conference, also known as Davos, regularly makes headlines and is attended by chief executives and heads of state, as well as leaders of other nonprofits and diplomats.
Schwab, the forum’s founder, announced in May that he would step down as the organization’s executive chairman to take up a new role as chairman of the WEF’s board of trustees.
Last month, a Wall Street Journal article detailed numerous allegations of employee harassment and discrimination, alleging that Schwab made sexual advances and inappropriate comments to female Forum employees. The article said that young female Forum employees were often the subject of unwanted advances at the annual conference and that the nonprofit did little to police the behavior.
In a statement to the WSJ, the forum said the article “[s] Our organization, our culture and our colleagues, including our founders.”