As outrage over the murder of George Floyd swept across the nation, many entertainment companies pledged to oppose racial injustice, including West Hollywood-based Digital Brand Architects.
“We support our black clients, friends, businesses and communities and we are with you,” DBA, an influencer management firm owned by the United Talent Agency, wrote on their Instagram account on May 31.
Then came the violent reaction. Former black employees turned to social media to say that the rhetoric did not match their own experiences at the management company.
“He was so offended that they would even have the audacity to post that when they didn’t even treat their black employees with respect,” said Kelsi Coleman, a former receptionist and operations assistant who was fired from the company in January. “I was so surprised that they would even say something about Black Lives Matter or Black anything because they don’t endorse that within their company.”
DBA responded by updating its post, saying it is “actively addressing where we have come up short as a company.”
In interviews with The Times, Coleman and several other employees of color, including former managers, described a culture in which they were marginalized and discriminated against.
A former company chief of human resources said white co-workers hit the N-word multiple times in front of it. A black assistant said a white employee had referred to her as a “dishwasher” and that she was fired after complaining of discrimination. An experienced brand manager said a boss rejected her ideas and fired her after just a month on the job.
DBA Executive Director Raina Penchansky said in a statement that the company was unable to address specific allegations from former employees interviewed by The Times, but that it took the complaints seriously.
“We have heard and listened to the detailed experiences by several of our former colleagues,” Penchansky said in a statement. “While we may question some of the claims that have been made, we respect the confidentiality that surrounds your employment, and we are required to use our space at this time to focus on the work that we have to do.”
Penchansky said DBA had hired a consultant to audit its practices. “We are dedicated to implementing new practices, new talents and new businesses that better serve the Black Community,” he added. “We have been legitimately called to be late to address our need for improvement and now we will pursue that immediate and meaningful change.”
The self-test comes as the entertainment industry has faced criticism for a lack of diversity in movies and TV shows and a shortage of black executives. Talent agencies have also come under scrutiny for failing to promote enough black employees in leadership roles and for a system that some believe favors family connections and wealthy youth who can afford to work in a low-key mailroom remuneration in an agency and move up the ladder path.
DBA was founded in 2010 and represents 150 influencers in areas such as fashion, food, and beauty.
Kendra Bracken-Ferguson, one of the co-founders of Digital Brand Architects and founder of BrainTrust.
(Brain confidence)
Kendra Bracken-Ferguson, who is black, was one of the founders. She said she was expelled in 2015 due to a difference of opinion about her direction and was excluded from the company’s narrative when it was acquired by the United Talent Agency last year. A statement listed Penchansky as the founder and CEO of DBA, but did not mention other co-founders, Karen Robinovitz and Bracken-Ferguson, who heads Los Angeles-based brand management firm BrainTrust.
“The company’s idea was the idea of Karen and me,” Bracken-Ferguson said in a statement. “The only disappointment I have is the fact that they thought they could erase me from the origin of the company.”
Bracken-Ferguson says she had to work with her publicist to call publications and prove she was a founder, a process she described as “humiliating.”
DBA said “it has never denied it [Bracken-Ferguson] co-founder, or requested that it be removed from articles mentioning the company’s co-founders in the years before and after he left. “He declined to comment further, citing” the confidentiality surrounding his employment. “
DBA, which has offices in Los Angeles and New York, said it has 60 employees, 92% of whom are women and 20% people of color, none of them black.
The lack of diversity created feelings of exclusion for the few black employees who previously worked there.
Among them was Coleman, who started as a receptionist at Digital Brand Architects in February last year. The 25-year-old was the only black employee in a 12-person office in New York. Although it was a low-level job, he thought working for a company run by women would boost his career.
But she soon felt sidelined.
In June 2019, Coleman says he was asked to help register guests with two other white attendees during a networking event with approximately 200 people on the roof of a luxury hotel in Manhattan. After Coleman ended her shift to register the guests, she said she was told to open the doors for the rest of the night so that other white assistants could communicate.
“So basically, like, ‘Get off, handle the tickets, because there’s no reason for you to be on the net in this room,'” Coleman said. “That’s how it felt.”
After other incidents, Coleman said he complained to the company’s human resources department. She provided an email to The Times documenting her complaints.
“I came to you a month ago and told you that I felt that I was discriminated against and treated differently / unfairly compared to everyone else,” Coleman said in an email on January 22. “Nothing was done about my complaint and I continued to work in an uncomfortable work environment.”
The email was written the same week Coleman was told she had been fired due to budget cuts.
Two days before her departure was scheduled, Coleman said she heard white employees talk about her departure, and one said the reason they kept her for a few more days was “because we really want a dishwasher.”
Her mother, Arnesler Coleman, confirmed that her daughter told her about the comment the day it happened. The Atlanta resident said her daughter, who had won written awards and launched her own magazine, was so distressed by her treatment that she needed medical attention to treat stomach problems caused by emotional distress. Her parents helped pay $ 10,000 in medical bills.
Coleman ended up leaving the entertainment industry and now works as a web content editor for a real estate company.
“I just couldn’t believe all of that was taken from my daughter,” said Arnesler Coleman. “I think she still wonders in her head, ‘Am I good enough?'”
Korie Steward, a former head of human resources at DBA who was fired last year, shot a 38-minute video on Instagram after the company posted its comments on Black Lives Matter.
Steward, who signed a non-disappearance clause as part of her compensation agreement, declined to be interviewed.
In her video, the 33-year-old woman said she joined DBA last year to help with her diversity efforts, but was fired after just 12 days on the job. The company told him it violated the policy by publishing confidential information about a possible employee layoff. Steward said he complained about an assistant who he thought was unproductive, but that the post was on his personal account.
In her video, Steward also cited several offensive comments her colleagues made at a work dinner the day before she was fired.
In one example, he said that a white staff member asked Steward if it was appropriate to say the word N if it is part of the lyrics of a rap song. Steward told him that he personally felt it was inappropriate for a white person to speak the racial slur. Then the white employee, along with other coworkers, performed Meek Mill’s “Dreams and Nightmares” on a phone and hit the N-word multiple times a foot away from where Steward was, he recalled.
“It was very, very disturbing to me,” Steward said of his DBA experience. “It really, really scared me. He broke every ounce of confidence he had. ”
Carla Santiago, former employee of Digital Brand Products.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Carla Santiago, a former brand development manager in 2016 at Digital Brand Products, a separately managed division of DBA, also had a brief tenure at the company.
The 40-year-old Harvard graduate said she often worked alone without lunch in a West Hollywood duplex for her boss and had to do housework such as translating cleaning instructions into Spanish for cleaning staff.
He said his boss complained when he left the office at 5 p.m. to pick up his young children and scoffed at his ideas.
When he noticed that celebrity apps were becoming more popular, Santiago said he prepared a presentation for his boss, saying that the company should create apps for its customers. He discarded the idea, Santiago recalled. Three weeks later, when those applications began to receive more press, he criticized Santiago for not having invented something similar.
Santiago, who had several years of experience working on digital campaigns, had worked from home and said he took a cut in wages to work at Digital Brand Products because it would diversify his experience and give him capital on new projects. About a month after work, her boss fired her and told her it was not working.
Shortly after she left, Santiago said she was replaced by the sister of a high-profile influencer represented by DBA. When called by phone, that woman said Santiago’s characterization “was not accurate” and declined to comment further.
Two people who worked with Santiago and declined to be identified because they were not authorized to comment said that Santiago was a capable manager and that they were surprised by his sudden departure.
“I didn’t mean anything to them,” said Santiago. “His friend needed a job and they were ready to fire me so I could connect his friend. They didn’t care how this affected my family. I felt he was as disposable as his babysitter and gardener. “
The DBA declined to comment on Santiago’s employment history, but said the cleaners were not asked to speak Spanish and that he worked in a temporary office for a three-person startup.
For Santiago, Coleman and Steward, they say that DBA abuse affected their health and careers.
Steward and Coleman left the entertainment industry. For months, Coleman said she deleted her photo from LinkedIn, worried that a company would fire her because she was black.
Santiago suffered a panic attack and after encountering the same obstacles in other companies, he ended up starting his own. She runs Coffee X Change, a peer-to-peer program that connects diverse executives, and owns Los Angeles-based entertainment strategy firm STORi.Digital.
“So I have my own business,” said Santiago. “There is no place for us. No one will give us a chance, so we have to interrupt. We have to do it our way. “
