Surviving DEI at Adyen N.V.
By publishing this blog, The Study Group evokes the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act (Wet bescherming klokkenluiders) of 18 February 2023.The full Whistleblower Protection Act from the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations is available in Dutch and English.
No culture. No contract. No humanity.
How did a program designed to build a bridge between the corporate world and intersectional talent reveal such alleged catastrophic levels systemic bias and leave us and our community on the brink?
Marie-Anne Leuty (she/her) shares the experience of being allegedly invited into Adyen N.V. to do DEI work and The Study Group's current legal fight to allegedly be recognised and paid for that culturally sensitive and important work by the fintech giant.
By publishing this blog, The Study Group evokes the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act (Wet bescherming klokkenluiders) of 18 February 2023.
The full act from the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations is available in Dutch and English.
Want to help amplify our story to other media? The Act protects all stakeholders who share it (clause 1a. Duty of confidentiality and data protection).
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1. Cultural extraction
If you’re reading this, it’s too late.
Adyen N.V. has allegedly chosen to double down on its stance that the multi-billion euro, public listed company seeking bank status allegedly doesn’t owe The Study Group and our team payment for work carried out for Adyen N.V.
Back in September, myself and Obi, Co-Founders of The Study Group, a BIPOC-founded media company and non-profit organisation founded in 2020, were allegedly dropped by our Program Partner, Dutch payments giant, Adyen N.V.
We were allegedly fired with immediate effect and seemingly without reason by email allegedly via Adyen N.V.’s Senior Legal Counsel with the Head of People, Senior Vice President of HR, Head of Legal EMEA and Vice President of Creative in CC.
Since then, with the outstanding advocacy of The BEULAH Foundation, we have been in legal proceedings to be paid for the specialist cultural consultancy work that we were invited into the company to develop; work allegedly commissioned to address the supposedly publicly documented lack of representation in the payment platform’s workforce.
DLA Piper Nederland N.V., the Dutch chapter of the second largest law firm in the United States, is Adyen N.V.’s legal representative.
They’ve allegedly adopted an all guns blazing approach, supposedly abusing the dire financial situation we have allegedly been put in by Adyen N.V.
Until we serve them with summons papers to take them to court, it seems that they don’t see the work we have produced as something of value.
They’ve allegedly advised us to take this to court if we want to seek further compensation.
They’re seemingly counting on us not being able to find the legal representation to take on a firm their size, cover our legal costs and serve them with a subpoena.
The cycles of oppression and extraction continue.
We believe that this case demonstrates an improper act or omission that jeopardises the proper functioning and execution of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code. It also constitutes a breach of the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and violates the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
This affects not only The Study Group, it disproportionately impacts historically excluded and disenfranchised people from communities who are internationally recognised and protected.
Adyen N.V. is allegedly refusing to give adequate compensation for the work and services of a family-run, BIPOC business with a majority female team; or acknowledge the talented collaborators from historically excluded communities who are also financially impacted by Adyen N.V.’s alleged actions.
The first half of the blog you’re about to read was shared with Adyen N.V.’s board of directors and other stakeholders in the company on 7 December 2023 on a password protected blog. It detailed our alleged experience from March until December 2022.
They also received a petition letter from The BEULAH Foundation outlining all the case law, customary law, national and international governance codes, UN Principles and other statutes and laws that demonstrate Adyen N.V.’s alleged lack of infrastructure, care and consideration for professionals from our communities.
These stem from what appears to be a lack of awareness with strong hints of incivility.
Sharing this and other evidence privately with Adyen N.V. allegedly wasn’t enough for them to consider our concerns.
They have allegedly offered to settle out of court for a nominal amount.
The thing is, we’re aware of both the impact and value of our work.
Given the alleged extreme levels of performativity and incivility we and the community have allegedly endured, I have to ask as a queer woman of colour, what does the future look like?
Instead of understanding, we encounter stewards whose alleged lack of awareness and inability to acknowledge our humanity mean that we are compromised from the get go.
We see the same narratives play out again and again.
This nightmare scenario isn’t even rare.
It happens all the time, we just never get to hear about these things going to court because there isn’t enough, if any, evidence.
Or the cost of legal representation and court fees create additional barriers to entry for people from underrepresented communities.
It may appear that the only reason we’ve been able to bring the story this far is because we’re a media company and non-profit with a content platform.
If it weren’t for the fact that Obi documents our daily work, who would believe this story?
We didn’t think the content we were gathering would turn into a detailed catalogue of evidence of alleged textbook corporate abuse.
And we didn’t want to go public because… it’s a lot.
Firstly, we’re incredibly proud of what the community has created, in spite of the challenges, and we didn’t want going public to impact or smear the work that everyone contributed to.
Secondly, Adyen N.V. supposedly came to us when they were facing an alleged cultural crisis and we were hoping that the results of our findings would contribute to their DEI goals and work culture.
We told Adyen N.V. back in May 2023, via a 36 minute long voice note I composed and recorded at 7 months pregnant, that the structural challenges we were allegedly encountering were an internal issue that needed to be addressed and fixed.
We also said that if we were in a situation where we would have to speak on this publicly to alert the community to our experience, it would look bad – some may say performative – that this entirely allegedly avoidable situation had been allowed to go unchecked and unresolved.
It would appear that that internal work has not happened.
As a consequence, an entire community’s trust in Adyen N.V. may be irrevocably eroded.
To date, we haven’t shared the details of our experience with our team and the community because we believed that the alleged issues we were identifying and communicating to Adyen N.V. would be fixed internally.
We have to give people the grace and opportunity to change because it takes time to recognise and internalise different perspectives to one’s own.
Unfortunately, the consideration and integrity with which we went about our work to develop the design and communication program allegedly hasn’t been reciprocated by our former Program Partner.
The graciousness with which we and the community have conducted ourselves in the face of such alleged dehumanisation and othering throws into relief the stark double standards that we must measure up to to be accepted in corporate space.
Our boundaries have allegedly been violated repeatedly in that process by a faceless entity that appears intent on being seen to do good without the accountability to follow through on its alleged obligations.
We knew that once we shared this with our advocates, allies and community that it could result in an unfortunate and far-reaching collective loss.
This case is bigger than us.
It demonstrates step-by-step how historically excluded people have to overextend themselves; be scrutinised when demonstrating excellence; make themselves more palatable to the dominant culture in an attempt to be respected and understood.
For the 81 weeks of the collaboration, we’ve worked relentlessly allegedly without a contract despite numerous requests.
From January to June 2023, we jumped through moving hoops allegedly set by HR professionals in Adyen N.V. leading on diversity initiatives; a team whose alleged lack of awareness, while delivering what appears to be apparent incivility, paints a bleak picture for historically excluded professionals who may have hoped for advocacy through DEI.
Everything happens for a reason.
Even this experience has to have been for something.
At a time in the world where we're unable to process unprecedented and growing collective grief, I didn’t want to have to share a deeper, insidious reality that plagues corporate space.
But here we are.
More and more creatives and professionals from historically excluded communities are opening up about the issues they face in their respective industries.
Earlier this week, prolific actress Taraji P Henson, shared in an interview that after more than thirty years in the industry she may quit acting.