Here's why I'm suing the New York Times for discrimination

I have to admit, it was not an easy decision to sue the New York Times, the company where I have worked for eight years in the advertising division. I’m a black woman in my 60s, and I’m currently battling multiple myeloma.

But in recent years I have had a front-row seat to the Times’s new management systematically purging my division (and others) of older employees, people of color and women whose family obligations are viewed as interfering with work.

In 2013, the new CEO of the Times, Mark Thompson, brought with him a reputation for aggressive change, as well as a record of disregard for older talent, during his eight years as director-general of the BBC. Unfortunately, Meredith Levien, one of Mr Thompson’s first executive appointments at the Times, whom he installed as chief revenue officer (she still is the only woman on the Times’s 10-strong executive team), immediately set a similarly discriminatory agenda in the advertising division. Top management openly announced its intention that the advertising staff would reflect their stereotype of the company’s customers and business partners: young, high-end and primarily white.

Over the next few years, my mentors and colleagues among the more experienced advertising employees disappeared, and the division’s once-diverse workforce no longer included any minority representation among its senior-level employees. Ms Levien and her hand-picked subordinates brought in a slate of new hires who were almost uniformly well under 40 and white (one manager referred to a group of his favored employees as his “handsome men”).

Many of my new colleagues were talented. But management’s bias towards youth and discriminatory images of what the readers and customers of the Times should look like came at the cost of pushing out the division’s most productive and valuable older, minority and female employees. We came to expect lower pay, being passed over for promotions and having to make do without perks and advantages (event tickets for advertising customers, invites to networking parties, summer Fridays off) that were simply not afforded to those in groups out of favor.

I came to New York City from Kansas in 1985, with a degree in communications and aspirations of a dream job with one of the world’s premier media organizations. I had been an activist for civil rights and social justice in college at the University of Kansas, where I came to appreciate how much media portrayals and priorities influenced public perceptions. It was one reason that I admired and valued the New York Times.

So when I landed my job at the Times in 2008, I was elated. My parents raised me to believe that I could do anything I set out to with focus and determination – and there I was, working for the New York Times after years of building my career.

I still have tremendous respect for what the Times stands for, and I believe very strongly in its mission to publish deep, public-minded journalism and forge a path for first-rate media in the 21st century. But as my struggle with cancer has continued, and management has tried multiple times to push me toward the exit, I realized that I could no longer focus on the greater mission and hope that things would get better.

I have seen too many of my dedicated coworkers depart through firings, resignations prompted by lack of opportunity and ostensibly voluntary exit packages, while Times management continues to pursue an agenda blind to their talents and achievements. For these reasons, I felt I had no choice but to go ahead with a publicly filed lawsuit confronting discrimination by the Times’s management.

I am very confident that, together with my co-plaintiff, Ernestine Grant (another black woman over the age of 60, and a 16-year Times employee), and our attorneys at Wigdor LLP, our efforts will prompt change – not just at the Times, but at other organizations tempted to give in to the simplistic stereotype of who belongs in a vigorous, contemporary organization.

The New York Times can best serve its employees, business partners, readers and the general public by leading the social change it champions in its pages.