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To billionaire Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team at the Department of Government Efficiency, Karen Ortiz may just be one of many faceless bureaucrats. But to some of her colleagues, she is giving a voice to those who feel they can’t speak out.Ortiz is an administrative judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the federal agency in charge of enforcing U.S. workplace anti-discrimination laws that has undergone tumultuous change since President Donald Trump took office. Like millions of other federal employees, Ortiz opened an ominous email on Jan. 28 titled “Fork in the Road” giving them the option to resign from their positions as part of the government’s cost-cutting measures directed by Trump and carried out by DOGE under Musk, an unelected official.Her alarm grew when her supervisor directed administrative judges in her New York district office to pause all their current LGBTQ+ cases and send them to Washington for further review in order to comply with Trump’s executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two “immutable” sexes male and female.Ortiz decried management’s lack of action in response to the directive, which she said was antithetical to the EEOC’s mission, and called upon some 185 colleagues in an email to “resist” complying with “illegal mandates.” But that email was “mysteriously” deleted, she said.The next day, after yet another frustrating “Fork in the Road” update, Ortiz decided to go big, emailing the EEOC’s acting chair Andrea Lucas directly and copying more than 1,000 colleagues with the subject line, “A Spoon is Better than a Fork.” In it, Ortiz questioned Lucas’s fitness to serve as acting chair, “much less hold a license to practice law.”“I know I take a great personal risk in sending out this message. But, at the end of the day, my actions align with what the EEOC was charged with doing under the law,” Ortiz wrote. “I will not compromise my ethics and my duty to uphold the law. I will not cower to bullying and intimidation.”Ortiz is just one person, but her email represents a larger pushback against the Trump administration’s sweeping changes to federal agencies amid an environment of confusion, anger and chaos. It is also Ortiz’s way of taking a stand against the leadership of a civil rights agency that last month moved to dismiss seven of its own cases representing transgender workers, marking a major departure from its prior interpretation of the law.Right after sending her mass email, Ortiz said she received a few supportive responses from colleagues and one calling her unprofessional. Within an hour, though, the message disappeared and she lost her ability to send any further emails.But it still made it onto the internet. The email was recirculated on Bluesky and it received more than 10,000 “upvotes” on Reddit after someone posted it with the comment, “Wow I wish I had that courage.”“AN AMERICAN HERO,” one Reddit user deemed Ortiz, a sentiment that was seconded by more than 2,000 upvoters. “Who is this freedom fighter bringing on the fire?” wrote another.The EEOC did not feel the same way. The agency revoked her email privileges for about a week and issued her a written reprimand for “discourteous conduct.”Contacted by The AP, a spokesperson for the EEOC said: “We will refrain from commenting on internal communications and personnel matters. However, we would note that the agency has a long-standing policy prohibiting unauthorized all-employee emails, and all employees were reminded of that policy recently.”A month later, Ortiz has no regrets.“It was not really planned out, it was just from the heart,” the 53-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview, adding that partisan politics have nothing to do with her objections and that the public deserves the EEOC’s protection, including transgender workers. “This is how I feel and I’m not pulling any punches. And I will stand by what I wrote every day of the week, all day on Sunday.”Ortiz said she never intended for her email to go beyond the EEOC, describing it as a “love letter” to her colleagues. But, she added, “I hope that it lights a fire under people.”Ortiz said she has received “a ton” of support privately in the month since sending her email, including a thank-you letter from a California retiree telling her to “keep the faith.” Open support among her EEOC colleagues beyond Reddit and Bluesky, however, has proven more elusive.“I think people are just really scared,” she said.William Resh, a University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy professor who studies how administrative structure and political environments affect civil servants, weighed in on why federal workers may choose to say nothing even if they feel their mission is being undermined.“We can talk pie in the sky, mission orientation and all these other things. But at the end of the day, people have a paycheck to bring home, and food to put on a table and a rent to pay,” Resh said.The more immediate danger, he said, is the threat to one’s livelihood, or inviting a manager’s ire.“And so then that’s where you get this kind of muted response on behalf of federal employees, that you don’t see a lot of people speaking out within these positions because they don’t want to lose their job,” Resh said. “Who would?”Richard LeClear, a U.S. Air Force veteran and EEOC staffer who is retiring early at 64 to avoid serving under the Trump administration, said Ortiz’s email was “spot on,” but added that other colleagues who agreed with her may fear speaking out themselves.“Retaliation is a very real thing,” LeClear said.Ortiz, who has been a federal employee for 14 years and at the EEOC for six, said she isn’t naive about the potential fallout. She has hired attorneys, and maintains that her actions are protected whistleblower activity. As of Friday, she still had a job but she is not a lifetime appointee and is aware that her health care, pension and source of income could all be at risk.Ortiz is nonetheless steadfast: “If they fire me, I’ll find another avenue to do this kind of work, and I’ll be okay. They will have to physically march me out of the office.”Many of Ortiz’s colleagues have children to support and protect, which puts them in a more difficult position than her to speak out, Ortiz acknowledged. She said her legal education and American citizenship also put her in a position to be able to make change.Her parents, who came to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1950s with limited English skills, ingrained in her the value of standing up for others. Their firsthand experience with the Civil Rights Movement, and her own experience growing up in mostly white spaces in Garden City on Long Island, primed Ortiz to defend herself and others.“It’s in my DNA,” she said. “I will use every shred of privilege that I have to lean into this.”Ortiz received her undergraduate degree at Columbia University, and her law degree at Fordham University. She knew she wanted to become a judge ever since her high school mock tial as a Supreme Court justice.Civil rights has been a throughline in her career, and Ortiz said she was “super excited” when she landed her job at the EEOC.“This is how I wanted to finish up my career,” she said. “We’ll see if that happens.” The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Claire Savage, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Kendra Scott, founder of her eponymous jewelry brand, still believes business can be a force for good. And she’s got the numbers to back it up. Today, the brand announces that its foundation has donated $70 million in monetary and in-kind contributions over the last fifteen years to a wide range of causes. It’s supported literacy by providing multicultural and bilingual books to low-income elementary schools. It’s set up a women’s leadership institute at the University of Texas, Austin. It has funded more than 40,000 hours of breast cancer research. At a time when the government is cutting funding to education and medical research, pouring money into these causes matters more than ever. Speaking to Student Athletes at the Kendra Scott Center at UT Austin [Photo: Kendra Scott] Scott says she’s only getting started. As the company grows explosivelygenerating a reported $500 million in revenue last year, a 20% increase from the year beforeScott believes it has the potential to donate even more. And even though many other companies are pulling back on their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, Scott is continuing to prioritize DEI. The brand’s most recent impact report, lists many DEI initiatives including creating an internal Hispanic Pod to better connect with Hispanic consumers year-round. I am not changing anything about my mission, end of story, she says. It doesn’t matter who the president is. Scott’s stance goes against the grain in corporate America. Many companies that once boasted about their social justice and equity initiativeslike Target and McDonald’shave pulled back from these efforts in response to the new political climate. Scott believes this is a mistake and will drive customers away. And indeed, there are now boycotts planned against both of these companies, and many others, including Amazon, Nestle, and General Mills. If you’re constantly pivoting who you are as a brand, you will not survive, says Scott. You won’t just falter in this political climate; you’re not going to survive in future ones. [Photo: Kendra Scott] Kendra Scott’s Unusual Philanthropy Model Scott was always interested in how she could build a profitable business that could also do good in the world. She launched the brand in 2002 out of a spare room when she was a young single mother. But even back then, she committed to helping any organization came to her asking for support. I had no money at the time, she says. But I said that I wasn’t going to turn anybody away, even if all I could contribute was a pair of earrings for a silent auction. Eventually, the brand took off. In 2010, she began opening stores, and that’s when she decided to formalize the charitable giving part of her business. Rather than picking a single cause, Scott wanted to give her customers some say in where money would go. So she developed a unique model where any customer can host a Kendra Gives Back event in-store where 20% of proceeds can go to a cause they care about. Last year alone, the company supported 12,600 causes, ranging from the girl scouts to pediatric cancer. [Photo: Kendra Scott] Scott believes this approach allows the brand to become more embedded in the community. We’re fostering a genuine connection with our customers because we’re meeting them in some of the darkest moments of their life,” she says. “We’re meeting them when their kids are fighting cancer and raising funds for things that could be tragic. We are trying to spread light in dark places.” As the company has grown, Scott has been able to invest in other causes that are important to her. In 2016, when Scott lost a close friend to breast cancer, the foundation began pouring money into breast cancer research and has already donated $2 million to this cause. Scott is also passionate about supporting literacy efforts in under resourced communities. She’s launched a program called Yellow Libraries, where the foundation partners with a literacy non-profit called First Book to provide multicultural and bilingual books to low-income schools that receive federal funding. Now, the government is slashing funding to scientific research and is contemplating eradicating the department of education. Corporate donations are now increasingly important to keeping these causes going. [Photo: Kendra Scott] Social Good Is Good For Business While some business leaders worry that philanthropy might be a distraction from building a profitable company, Scott believes philanthropy has been directly tied to the brand’s growth. “It’s what differentiates our brand from our competitors,” she says. “It’s what keeps customers engaged and loyal.” The company is now scaling quickly, generating half a billion dollars in annual sales. In 2016, the private equity firm Berkshire Partners acquired a minority stake in the business, valuing the company at $1 billion. This allowed it to expand its retail operations. It now has more than 100 standalone stores, while also selling through retailers like Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. It also sells products through its e-commerce website. The brand has been deliberate about appealing to new generations of customers. It offers a wide range of price points, and many tweens gravitate towards the brand’s more affordable necklaces like the Elisa, which sell at a rate of one a minute. Scott points out that Gen Z is very socially conscious, and are more likely to engage with brands that support a social cause. But the brand also remains popular with older customers, many of whom have been loyal fans for years. When we closed all our stores during COVID, customers started writing in to ask about the employees in the stores, Scott recalls. It was a testament to how these stores were really part of the community and had shown up when customers needed donations. Scott believes it would be a mistake to change the brand’s approach now, even as the political climate in the country is changing and many other companies are turning their back on social justice initiatives. Consistency is so important, Scott says. When we say we’re going to do something, we do it.
Category:
E-Commerce
Digits is taking on QuickBooks and Xero, with the worlds first AI-powered Autonomous General Ledger, allowing small business owners and accountants to put their accounting needs almost completely in the hands of AI. Digits announced the servicewhich went live Mondayat HumanX in Las Vegas, after working on it for the past five years in stealth mode and putting it in the hands of hundreds of companies to test out over the past year. The platform serves as an alternative to other accounting software or platforms, such as QuickBooks or Xero, but stands out as it uses its own proprietary AI technology. Jeff Seibert, the cofounder and CEO of Digits, says that puts the platform ahead of other competing accounting programs, even those that purport to also utilize AI technology. In many cases, he says, those platforms are simply throwing numbers into broad-based LLMs like ChatGPT, and not purpose-built AI tools, like what Digits has built in-house. We went all the way, Seibert says. We went heads-down, and spent the past five years creating the first end-to-end accounting platform for the AI era. And when comparing Digits to key competitors, Seibert says that were feature-competitive, we can do everything that they can do, but again, the difference is that weve spent five years training our own models, allowing for automation for a vast majority of the work. So, for accountants or small business owners, using Digits is a matter of connecting the right accounts, and letting the AI take overit can record and categorize transactions in near-real-time, reconcile accounts, and then create insights and reports. In effect, processes that may take weeks can be winnowed down to minutes. Interestingly, Seibert says that he hopes Digits can help stymie a larger issue in the accounting field: the lack of accountants. Currently, three-quarters of accountants are near retirement age, and the number of prospective accountants (those taking CPA exams) is the lowest in decades. While theres already a glut of accounting talent, its set to get worse. Nobody in Gen Z wants to be an accountant, Seibert says. As such, he hopes Digits can prove to be a stop-gap of sortsnot replace human accountants entirely, but allow those accountants to do more with less. Digits has already garnered a good amount of attention from investors, having raised around $100 million in recent years from investors such as Benchmark and SoftBank. And customers seem to be buying in, too, as the group of businesses that spent the past year testing the product are giving it a thumbs-up, according to Seibert. We already have hundreds of firms that want to access it, he says. Its magical.
Category:
E-Commerce
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