Indian American accused of gender discrimination

- ADVERTISEMENT -

In 2006, Kleiner Perkins sent Indian American Ajit Nazre and his coworker Ellen Pao on a business trip to Germany.

Now, after Pao lost her gender discrimination lawsuit against the company, she has written a book called “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change” which will be out on Sept. 19.

According to a Business Insider report, when Pao and Nazre were in Germany, Nazre told her that he was having some marital problems and hinted that the two get together.

While they were together, Nazre told Pao that he had separated from his wife however, she soon found out he had lied to her and she ended the affair.

But things got worse for Pao who was a junior partner at Kleiner Perkins at the time.

Nazre began to grow hostile toward her and started excluding her from meetings.

This behavior of his even continued after she got married, had a baby and returned from maternity leave.

“Not only was he blocking my work, he had been promoted to a position of even greater responsibility and was giving me negative reviews,” Pao told Business Insider.

“I started to lodge formal complaints about him. In response, the firm suggested I transfer to the China office,” she added.

At first the company strongly denied Pao’s claims during the lawsuit but when another female partner came forward with similar allegations against Nazre, the company put him on leave and he eventually left the firm.

Pao thinks that he left with a hefty payout of about $10 million though she decided to file a lawsuit against the company for $16 million.

Although Pao lost her suit on all four counts, she has been fighting for diversity in the tech industry and has since founded Project Include, a nonprofit that aims to build “meaningful, enduring diversity and inclusion into tech companies,” and told Business Insider that rather than accept millions from Kleiner for signing a non-disparagement contract, she is choosing not to sign the contract so that she can publicly share her version of events.

A Kleiner Perkins spokeswoman said in an emailed statement: “Kleiner Perkins wholeheartedly believes in the need for greater diversity and inclusion in the workforce. We support Ellen Pao’s mission and efforts through Project Include to improve workplace culture for women and other under-represented groups. However, Pao’s claims against Kleiner Perkins were examined thoroughly during a five-week trial in 2015 and were rejected by the jury which ruled against her on every claim.”