We’ve made the editorial decision not to use the PwC Chad image for this article even though that would be ironically funny.
In a lawsuit filed on July 22, former PwC principal, FinTech magazine top woman in fintech, and 55-year-old Asian-American Nina Owens alleges that she was ousted from the firm one day before her five-year anniversary “that would have afforded her greater job protection and full vesting of her 401(k) account.” This despite exceeding revenue targets and high praise from clients, she claims.
Why is her Asian-ness relevant to the story? We’ll let the lawsuit tell it.
As a 55-year-old Asian-American woman, Owens did not get the support and recognition that PWC gave to partners and principals who were men, white, and/or younger. PWC’s age bias is so open, that it has mandatory retirement for partners and principals at age 60.
PWC has gotten away with this blatant age bias by taking the position that its thousands of partners and principals are not in fact employees entitled to the protections of the civil rights laws and (at least until some recent changes in federal law) by forcing them into secret arbitrations.
PwC is no stranger to age-based lawsuits. A recent class action settlement required PwC to pay $11,625,000 after an older CPA was denied employment at the firm.
Now let’s get to the (alleged) hater-ass white guys:
PWC brought Owens in as a principal in 2019 to build out a digital transformation focused on payments, a business area that had languished for the past several years. Owens was soon disappointed. Her first manager, a white man, did not provide her with any
support or integration into the firm, prohibited her from pursuing new business opportunities outside of consumer credit cards, and took away leads that Owens generated and provided them to male partners and directors. Another white, male partner stole credit for revenue from Owens, making her tracked revenue look less positive than it actually was, and blocked her promotion to a senior role leading an account. Another male partner engaged in gender-based abuse to Owens, tried to steal revenue credit from her, and tried to get her removed from her primary account. His conduct was so egregious that Owens filed two complaints and a female Latina Director filed an additional complaint against him with PWC’s internal Ethics & Compliance (“E&C”) department in August/September 2023. Owens repeatedly raised concerns about all this conduct to PWC, but PWC did not take any genuine remedial action. Instead, PWC punished Owens.
Things started looking up in early 2023 but not for long:
In January 2023, Owens got a new manager who removed prior obstacles and allowed her to pursue a new line of business she had been trying to develop for years. Almost immediately, Owens’s revenue began to increase, and after that grew exponentially. Rather than applaud Owens’s success, PWC notified Owens on March 25, 2024, that she was being forced to “withdraw” from the firm no later than June 26, 2024. As of December 31, 2023, six months into PWC’s fiscal year, Owens had already exceeded her annual revenue target. As of June 26, 2024, Owens’s revenues were approximately 122% of her target, even accounting for the fact that PWC pushed Owens to give up to other partners 60% of revenues she sold.
Mentioned in the suit is the partner to whom she reported Jim Russell, payments practice leader and white guy in his 40s. “Russell became increasingly negative in his interactions with Owens, despite her success in her first year,” says the suit. “He also began to make public comments about her age. For example, during a team meeting Owens said that Gerson Lehrman Group (“GLG”), a financial services company that provides experts, had asked to interview her. Russell said, in front of the entire team, that “GLG only asks people to serve as experts who are old.”
The alleged hater also limited her opportunities to generate revenue, she says:
Owens was not permitted to solicit clients with whom she had worked at Accenture due to restrictive covenants. Despite this, Russell provided Owens with fewer than five leads in three years. Russell provided leads to young, white, male Directors and to his fellow white, male principals in payments. Russell also did not offer Owens any thought leadership or speaking engagement opportunities, except for one opportunity in December 2021. Russell gave opportunities to participate in conferences to younger, white men.
And another male partner, presumably a non-white one but let’s not assume:
In July 2023, Owens sold three projects with combined revenue in the seven figures to Client A. She agreed to co-deliver with, and split the revenue with, Vishal Rawal, a male partner in the Strategy& group about 15 years younger than her. Although the COO of Client A had asked Owens to scope the work, Rawal changed the EP signature to his name in the final version of the contract in July 2023, which Owens did not know at the time.
In July and August 2023, Owens repeatedly complained to Hoover and Vennetti that Rawal was trying to push her off the account, was allocating more than 50% of the revenue to himself, and was engaging in gender-based harassment toward her. Rawal was abusive and disrespectful toward Owens. For example, he told Owens not to speak on conference calls and said he would do all the speaking; he pulled her into conference rooms to threaten and berate her; he told the male Directors to exclude Owens from meetings and not to follow her directions; he yelled at her in front of Directors; and he sent emails denigrating her, on which he copied junior employees. Owens never saw Rawal treat any men that way.
OH and she claims she was consistently underpaid by 15-40% compared to her male and white partner/principal peers from FY20 to FY22 and for FY24, was paid 30% less that the average PwC partner in the US at her level and 38% less than the average direct admit partner in the US.
Owens asserts the behavior described in the suit constitutes race discrimination and retaliation according to Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) violations, and violations of New York city and state laws.
In a comment to HR Dive, a PwC spokeswoman said Owens’ claims are “baseless” and that PwC treated her fairly. “The decision to withdraw her from the partnership was based on legitimate business considerations and determined in accordance with PwC’s partnership agreement to which she agreed when she was admitted — which also requires she pursue her claims before a neutral arbitrator. PwC will have these meritless claims moved to arbitration, and then will defeat them,” she said.
Coincidentally, this month marks ten years since PwC introduced arbitration for employee beefs. It also marks ten years since a PwC spokesperson told us the move to arbitration was “a noncontroversial decision” despite us having heard and read quite a bit of griping about it in the time since. And a follow up to that first story we published in March 2014: PwC Issues New Offers to New Hires, Now With Bonus Mandatory Arbitration.
Full suit for your reading pleasure below.
#pwcproud
There may be a lot going on here but the mandatory retirement at 60 is not a unique thing to PwC.
Perhaps so. However, they are always touting their esg principles. Once again falling severely short of of the values they march around proclaiming are so dear.