The board of directors hires an outside law firm to look into staff
complaints.
By Sarah Lorge Butler
Oct 30, 2020

2019 nyc marathon
Jon SimonGetty Images

New York Road Runners (NYRR), the nonprofit organization behind the
New York City Marathon—the world’s largest 26.2-mile race—and
dozens of other road races each year, is facing allegations of racism
and sexism from former and current employees.

On September 14, NYRR’s board of directors announced in an email to
staff that it had retained an outside law firm, Proskauer Rose, to
interview employees and examine the organization’s policies and
practices. The board subsequently expanded the scope of Proskauer’s
interviews to include former staff who had left NYRR within the past
four years.

The law firm’s involvement is the latest development for the
organization’s leadership team and staff, who have faced a summer and
fall of anguished discussions over race and equality.

The conflict spilled into public view on September 1 when a group
calling itself RebuildNYRR started a petition calling for the
removal of the CEO and president, Michael Capiraso, and an Instagram
account cataloguing employee grievances. But employees say the
reckoning over race and gender issues has been an open topic of
discussion on company Zoom meetings since June 1—and quieter
complaints, to human resources and in small group discussions, date
back years.

Runner’s World spoke to 17 current, furloughed, and former staffers,
who shared their concerns about discrimination at NYRR as well as
emails, presentations, and recordings of meetings backing up their
claims.

Among the most serious allegations:
* NYRR has a culture of favoritism that typically benefits white men,
who are promoted faster—and are therefore better compensated—than
people of color and women.
* Human resources does not adequately handle complaints.
* A position for a director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
has remained open for 19 months, making employees question whether
it’s a priority for NYRR leadership. Over the summer, the position
was upgraded to vice president; a listing on the NYRR website
dating August 13 reflects that title.
* The board of directors—charged with overseeing Capiraso—had
little interaction with staff members about equity issues and did
not understand the scope of staff complaints until early September.

Many of the complaints were summarized in a four-page presentation that
one department, Strategic Partnerships and Runner Products, created for
Capiraso in June. In one bullet point, those staff members wrote they
“don’t feel uniformly valued based on their race and gender.” In
another, they wrote, “Staff do not believe HR is able to address sexism
and racism at NYRR.”

In response to questions from Runner’s World, NYRR provided a written
statement from Capiraso, which read, in part:

“The NYRR leadership team and I are committed to ensuring every one of
our employees feels respected, included, and understood. With the
assistance of an independent diversity, equity, and inclusion
consultant, we’ve listened to our employees, evaluated our workplace
culture, and identified areas where we can change for the better.
Working groups made up of staff at all levels are currently addressing
priority areas including modifying our existing human resources
processes, instituting a comprehensive DEI leadership training program,
developing a new decision-making process for staff and leadership, and
redefining the organization’s vision and values.” (The full text of the
statement is at the bottom of this article.)

Pay and promotion gaps

In the interviews with Runner’s World, NYRR employees described a
culture where it was difficult for people of color to earn promotions,
while their white counterparts rose up the ranks.

All but three asked not to be named. The current employees said they
feared retribution in the workplace, and some of the former staffers,
who were laid off in July when NYRR announced coronavirus-related
staff cuts and furloughs, said they signed separation agreements that
prevented them from speaking publicly. Those currently furloughed said
they worried that going public would jeopardize their future job
prospects—and any chance they might have at severance payments should
NYRR not bring them back.

Most told Runner’s World they had already shared their experiences in
interviews with Proskauer.

A white male manager of several employees of color said he struggled to
get them recognized for the strong work they were doing. “I had a much
harder time getting raises, bonuses, and promotions for staff of color
than others, and at first I wasn’t quite sure why that was,” he said.
“But it became a pattern and practice that was hard to overcome. Once
there was a preconceived notion about a staffer, it was also very hard
to change and reverse, no matter how hard you fought for them.”

Two Black men said they felt they had hit a ceiling. Their twice-yearly
performance reviews—around the end of the fiscal year in March and
after the NYC Marathon in early November—would be “glowing,” but
anything more than cost-of-living raises rarely followed.

“When I ask about promotions, it’s usually the same answers: They’re
working on it; they value my work,” one said. “I told
straight up: There’s no growth potential. To see people who haven’t
worked there as long as me, who haven’t put in the work that I have,
it’s unfair.”

Another said his reviews were “full of praise,” but “they always take a
poor turn when I ask for a salary increase or a promotion. That’s when
my VP just comes at me I’m a poor communicator. I’m
non-collaborative.”

Four white men confirmed in separate interviews that they felt they had
gained advantages from inequities at NYRR.

“Yeah, as a white male, I’ve 100 percent benefitted from the system
that’s in place,” said one director-level employee, who said he has
risen faster in the organization than a Black colleague who started the
week after he did in the same department.

Another white male staffer described a similar situation, receiving a
promotion and a “decent-sized” raise one year after he joined the
company. He subsequently heard from employees of color and women who
had asked for raises and promotions for years, to no avail.

Justin Wilson, a senior product manager in the IT department, was
furloughed in September and subsequently left NYRR for a new job.

“In the five years I was there, I was promoted twice—I got a new title
and a pay raise that went with it without even asking,” said Wilson,
who is white. “It was weird. I found out when it had already gone
through that my title was changing.”

In the course of conversations with women in his department, Wilson
said he came to realize that his coworkers had been asking for raises
and promotions and were being denied. A female coworker asked him
outright how much he was making, and they discovered that after his
promotions, he was earning $33,000 more than she was. “I was promoted
twice before she was promoted once,” he said.

In the interviews Runner’s World conducted, only one former employee,
who left on her own, said she didn’t experience any problems with the
culture. “I never saw any issues from a female standpoint or a
diversity standpoint,” she said.

NYRR declined to furnish to Runner’s World demographic information
about employees at the director level and above.

The 2019 Form 990, a tax filing that by law nonprofits must make
public, provides a limited snapshot of the company’s leadership from
2018–19: Of the 10 highest-paid employees, six were men and four were
women. Only one was a person of color, and he recently left the
company.

In addition to the complaints of discrimination based on pay and
promotions, employees of color said they endured other behaviors that
they felt were racially motivated: meetings where ideas from Black and
Latino employees were quickly shot down, for instance. One Black
staffer told Runner’s World that after three years at the company, a
senior leader still couldn’t pronounce his name correctly.

“This is the hard part about naming culture in an organization,”
another current employee said. “It’s a lot of small moments that create
the way it looks and the way it operates.”

Employees said Capiraso sets the tone. He has been NYRR’s president and
CEO since 2015, although he shared leadership of the organization with
Peter Ciaccia, president of events, until Ciaccia’s retirement in
2018. Employees allege Capiraso is slow to make hires and is involved
in even the smallest decisions at the company.
tiki barber visits "mornings with maria"
President and CEO of New York Road Runners, Michael Capiraso, visits
Mornings With Maria at Fox News Channel Studios before the 2019 New
York City Marathon.
Steven FerdmanGetty Images

When staff went to human resources to complain about pay, promotions,
or personal interactions that felt racist or sexist, they said they
rarely heard anything back.

The process of filing a complaint is “a black hole,” said Rahsaan
Chisolm, a furloughed manager, who explicitly said he was not speaking
on behalf of the company but from his own experience. “Especially if
you are a non-senior staffer who has a grievance against a senior staff
member. Your complaints will disappear unless you are committed to
vigilant follow-up.”

A spokesperson for NYRR said human resources promptly and thoroughly
investigates all complaints of discrimination, harassment, or
retaliation.

A social media post misses the mark

Although the complaints voiced in interviews to Runner’s World date
back, in some cases, several years, employees said the problems weren’t
always obvious to those outside the company. That changed on May 31.
The organization faced an outcry over an Instagram post referencing the
police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The post drew critical reactions in the comments and was removed a few
hours after it was published on Instagram. It included the phrase
“equal rights for all” and the hashtag “justice for all.” Many inside
the organization saw it as a nod to the “All Lives Matter” movement,
which runs directly counter to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Capiraso emailed staff an apology the next day. “A post to our
Instagram page yesterday was intended to show our solidarity and
compassion,” the email read, in part. “We did not get it right. I am
deeply sorry, and I take responsibility for that.” An apology post
also went up on Instagram on June 1.

For many in the organization, Capiraso’s email did not go far enough in
explaining how the post came to be written. Accounts about it from
staffers vary, but they all agree that Capiraso was among those
involved. Some described the incident as the latest example of a
workplace culture that they feel minimizes people of color and women.
For employees who say they have struggled at times at NYRR, the post
was a breaking point.

In the days after the George Floyd post, the leadership team retained
Tai Dixon, an attorney with expertise in workplace culture and
diversity and inclusion, to facilitate a June 11 “open forum” meeting
about race and racism.

“The meetings, the interviews with the DEI consultant—it takes
emotional energy and is a strain on time and money.”

Over the following weeks, staff said they were required to participate
in one of 23 focus groups, led by Dixon. Those focus groups were
intended to give staff “an opportunity to share feedback and discuss
what meaningful changes in behaviors, management, organizational
practices, and workgroups are needed to ensure a diverse, equitable,
and inclusive workplace,” according to an email obtained by Runner’s
World, explaining the mandatory meetings.

The various meetings—all on Zoom, as the staff continues to work
remotely during the pandemic—have consumed collectively hundreds of
hours of their time, employees said.

“They created this toxic, discriminatory environment and put the burden
on us to fix it for them,” said one current female staff member. “The
meetings, the interviews with the DEI consultant—it takes emotional
energy and is a strain on time and money.”

A summer of change

On July 21, NYRR announced that it was letting go of 26 of its 229
full-time employees and furloughing another 65 for six months, cutbacks
it said were necessitated by pandemic-related losses. Additional
part-time staff were furloughed, and several full-time employees who
were furloughed said they don’t believe they will be brought back.

According to tax filings, the organization in 2019 had revenues of $113
million, which makes it by far the largest organization of its kind in
the U.S. With the cancellation of its signature events—including the
NYC Marathon—due to the coronavirus, it has lost millions in
registration fees in 2020.

The financial health of the organization depends largely on when
runners can return to events safely in significant numbers. The news
isn’t all dire, however. NYRR is currently in the process of
negotiating insurance claims for the cancellation of the marathon, the
NYC Half, and a few other large events.

Before the pandemic, the organization had seen significant revenue
growth. From 2017 to 2019, the company’s revenue was up almost 30
percent, according to tax filings. In 2019, it reported net assets of
$49.7 million. NYRR also received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of
between $2 million and $5 million.

A public petition

On September 1, RebuildNYRR, which on Instagram calls itself an
“anonymous group of former and current employees,” unveiled a petition
calling for the board to fire Capiraso because he “fosters toxic,
discriminatory, and systemically racist work culture at NYRR.”
Simultaneously, complaints about the culture inside NYRR began
surfacing on a RebuildNYRR Instagram account, which currently has more
than 2,000 followers.

Most staff members that Runner’s World spoke to said they were not
aware of the RebuildNYRR effort before it launched. But they said they
were relieved that it existed, because it publicized their struggles
after a summer in which employees felt reforms were slow in coming.

The first communication from the board of directors to the staff about
DEI issues occurred a few days after the RebuildNYRR campaign was made
public. George Hirsch, the chairman of NYRR’s board of directors,
sent an email to all employees on September 4. (Hirsch was the
publisher of Runner’s World from 1987 to 2004.)

“We know we have work to do to ensure the organization continually
lives up to its ideals,” he wrote in part. “We have heard and
appreciate the calls to do better, not just on DEI matters, but across
all areas of organizational leadership and culture.”

On September 10, the staff was invited to another town hall-style
meeting with Dixon and several members of the board of directors to
share Dixon’s findings and discuss next steps. According to employees
in attendance, the meeting was “really uncomfortable.”

Those same employees said Dixon’s presentation to the staff,
summarizing the results of 23 focus groups with employees and several
one-on-one meetings, was vague.

“She shared some overarching talking points,” one staffer said. “She
just restated the obvious. It feels insulting to be told what we
already knew.”

In the same meeting, employees heard from NYRR board members Nnenna
Lynch and Cidra Sebastien.

In a recording of the meeting shared with Runner’s World, Lynch can be
heard saying, “I think one of the things we’re hoping to do with this
process—it’s not just look at specific allegations but really look at
the infrastructure, if you will, that allowed some of these issues to
proliferate. So the policies, practices, and procedures and taking a
very clear-eyed look at where we got off course and where we need to
tweak or revamp or start from scratch.”

A few moments later she conceded that the board was not aware of the
extent of staff complaints and low morale until September.

“Certainly we saw a lot of intense emotion after George Floyd’s murder
and Black Lives Matter, and we engaged Tai,” she said in that meeting.
“But it was really just a week ago that we started to get a really full
sense of the concerns and the issues.”

Sebastien echoed Lynch’s words and acknowledged that being asked to
share grievances, while feeling like things aren’t moving, can be
“infuriating.”

The 26 directors on the board created a task force to evaluate and
address the concerns that employees have raised. It’s composed of 10
directors, with Lynch, who is Black and a former elite runner, at the
helm.

In a statement to Runner’s World, Hirsch wrote, “The NYRR Board of
Directors is deeply engaged with the work of making NYRR a more
equitable and inclusive organization, and we recognize that more needs
to be done—that’s why we’ve created a Board task force dedicated to
these issues, why we’ve worked closely with Tai Dixon to understand her
findings, and why we continue to be in constant dialogue with members
of the leadership team and staff at every level.”

Moving forward

new york, ny november 03 runners start the tcs new york city marathon
on the verrazzano bridge on november 3, 2019 in new york city photo by
drew levinnew york road runners via getty images
Runners start the New York City Marathon on the Verrazzano Bridge on
November 3, 2019.
Drew LevinGetty Images

On September 18, Capiraso and the Senior Leadership Team issued another
apology email.

“We’d like to start by saying we are sorry. If those words haven’t come
through clearly enough, these words are directed to you,” the email
read. “Trust is broken, you expect more, and you want change.”

But to those outside the organization, NYRR’s public silence on the
topic of RebuildNYRR has been mystifying.

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but NYRR must acknowledge
RebuildNYRR and thank them for their bravery and immediately begin
conversations in a manner that RebuildNYRR would feel comfortable
with,” Alison Désir, a New York-based activist in the running
community, wrote in an email to Runner’s World.

“This is an amazing opportunity for NYRR to be at the forefront of a
new running industry. I cannot believe they might squander the
opportunity.”

“Humanity has been lost, it seems. Many wrongs have been committed, and
yet RebuildNYRR doesn’t want to tear down the organization—they want to
rebuild it with social justice at its center. This is an amazing
opportunity for NYRR to be at the forefront of a new running industry.
I cannot believe they might squander the opportunity.”

And tension persists between senior leaders and the staff. On October
8, during another meeting, employees pressed for answers on why they
weren’t given a more complete report on Dixon’s findings from focus
groups and one-on-one interviews with staff.

“I was on a call with 15 other NYRR staff and Tai to talk about the
work culture and infrastructure at NYRR,” said Anna Anderson, a current
manager in IT, who, like Chisolm, said she was speaking about her own
experiences. “On the call, we expressed our frustration and deep hurt,
and it felt like an honest and open conversation. I have heard from
other staff that their calls with Tai were similar. We all expected
that the results would be shared internally, in the spirit of
transparency and willingness to change. That hasn’t happened. We still
have no proof that NYRR plans to change in any meaningful way, despite
many conversations.”

Employees are hopeful that Proskauer’s interviews will force the board
to consider changes to the organization’s leadership to include more
diversity, and greater transparency in hiring, promotions, and
salaries. But they’re realistic, too. The complaints on the RebuildNYRR
Instagram and ones that they’ve reported to HR, they say, predate the
pandemic.

Staffers find themselves in different camps. One employee described
coworkers as “hopeful and optimistic,” and another felt that board
members Lynch, Sebastien, and others on the task force were “working in
good faith and trying to understand what is going on.” Some employees,
however, feared the hiring of Proskauer was window dressing.

Most are somewhere in the middle, one Black manager told Runner’s
World. “You’re just exhausted. You hope for the best,” he said, “but
this has dragged out longer than it should have.”

Observers are rooting for a peaceful resolution, while realizing the
potential damage to NYRR’s reputation. Will runners vote with their
feet and skip participating in events, whenever they return? Will
sponsors lose interest?

“People who work there feel very harmed by this. They’re in a lot of
pain about it,” another former staff member said. “I want to see
get through this. It’s going to have a hard time getting through this
by waiting it out and letting it pass. And I don’t want to see the good
work of the organization go away at the expense of all of this.”

Wilson, the former IT manager, concurs and hopes his colleagues are
treated fairly, whatever the outcome of Proskauer’s interviews and
RebuildNYRR’s campaign.

“The people on the ground are some of the smartest, most hardworking,
most creative people out there,” he said. “Truly outstanding, the
absolute best at what they do.”
__________________________________________________________________

Full NYRR statement
We believe running has the power to bring diverse groups of people
together, and we work every day to make our entire community feel
safe, valued, inspired, and heard—whether it’s at work, on a run, or
anywhere else. The NYRR leadership team and I are committed to
ensuring every one of our employees feels respected, included, and
understood. With the assistance of an independent diversity, equity,
and inclusion consultant, we’ve listened to our employees, evaluated
our workplace culture, and identified areas where we can change for
the better. Working groups made up of staff at all levels are
currently addressing priority areas including modifying our existing
human resources processes, instituting a comprehensive DEI
leadership training program, developing a new decision-making
process for staff and leadership, and redefining the organization’s
vision and values.
__________________________________________________________________

Sarah Lorge Butler worked at New York Road Runners—then known as the
New York Road Runners Club—from 1995–97. Hearst, the corporate parent
of Runner’s World, rents office space to New York Road Runners.
Runner’s World has maintained a marketing and media relationship with
NYRR and the NYC Marathon from 1976 through 2020.
Sarah Lorge Butler Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living
in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and
fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005.
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