Months after Time’s Up CEO Tina Tchen’s resignation, the women’s rights organisation has decided to lay off most of its 25-member staff by the end of the year as part of a ‘major reset’, Variety reported.
Following Tchen’s resignation, in early September, producer Shonda Rhimes and actor Eva Longoria also resigned from the organisation’s advisory board, along with other members like Jurnee Smollett, Katie McGrath, Christy Haubegger, Hilary Rosen, Michelle Kydd, and Nina Shaw.
Time’s Up, which promotes the idea of a safe workspace for women and aims to protect them from harassment, was founded in the wake of the MeToo movement following the sexual harassment cases against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
The organisation became embroiled in controversy for its alleged complicity in shrouding the harassment allegations against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
In December 2020, Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to Cuomo, called him out on Twitter for sexually harassing her for years. As per a Washington Post report, leaders of Time’s Up worked closely with Cuomo’s office when Boylan first reported the case, and Tchen reportedly asked her staff to refrain from releasing a statement in support of the former aide.
Tchen resigned from her posts as the President and the Chief Executive Officer of the Time’s Up in August, shortly after being named in the Attorney General’s report on the investigations into the Cuomo case.
Following this, activist Alison Turkos put out an open letter calling out the board for failing to heed to survivors’ outcry. The letter was penned by sexual assault survivors, current and former Time’s Up Legal Defence Fund clients, and former Time’s Up staff.
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The high-profile resignations of the board members followed and Time’s Up issued a statement saying the organisation was ready for “new leadership” and wanted to “move forcefully toward its new iteration.” Monifa Bandele was installed as interim CEO to oversee a comprehensive assessment of the organisation.
Bandele will now step down at the end of the year, and the organisation will just be left with three staffers and a four-member board, including Ashley Judd, one of Harvey Weinstein’s first accusers. Judd will lead the transition.
In an opinion piece for USA Today, Bandele wrote, “The board has decided that a major reset is needed. We are now in the process of rebuilding Time’s Up from the ground up.”