An Open Letter to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf: Lack of Diverse Talent? Maybe It’s Because Blatant Racism and Sexism at Wells Fargo Suppress and Even Fire Diverse Talent
By: Angela Lu
Tags: Diversity, Diversity And Inclusion, Racism, Banking, Sexism

An Open Letter to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf: Lack of Diverse Talent? Maybe It’s Because Blatant Racism and Sexism at Wells Fargo Suppress and Even Fire Diverse Talent Angela Lu Dec 16, 2020·7 min read

Dear Charlie,

My name is Angela Lu and I’m a recently fired employee from Wells Fargo (“WF”). Let me briefly introduce myself. I’m a minority American woman in my 40s with an MBA degree from a top-5 business school in the US, a CFA charter (Chartered Financial Analyst, one of the most preeminent licenses in financial services), and nearly 20 years of financial services and business strategy experience from top-tier firms, including the past almost 6 years at WF with an impeccable performance record during my entire employment.

By now, you may start to wonder, how did an employee like me who most people would call a talent for sure, let alone a minority woman talent, end up getting ranked by her white male managers at the very bottom 5% of WF’s over 260,000 employees, and even getting fired? In fact, to add astonishing drama to my story, my managers brutally fired me over the phone, effective immediately, with no minimum 60-day notice, no severance for my nearly 6 years of service, and even no paperwork! In addition, I was instantly cut off of access to all company sites including 401(k), pay vouchers and instructions on logistics of departure. The way I was fired was particularly and utterly cruel, not only because my career, name and reputation were viciously destroyed, but also because the whole country has been going through a pandemic and massive unemployment. But that’s not even half of the story. Let me walk you through the very painful ordeal that I was put through by my four very abusive managers and superiors over the course of nearly two years with their blatant racism, sexism and inhumane retaliation against my whistleblowing on their repeated misconduct and company policy violations.

For your reference, my male managers and superiors are:

Dirk Schmidt: EVP and Head of Commercial Banking Strategy

Satoshi Watanabe: SVP who reports to Dirk

Pascal Hoffmann and Jamey Escaler: SVPs who were newly hired in late 2018 and both report to Satoshi

About myself: VP in this group with Dirk and Satoshi ever since I joined WF in 2014. Yes, 6 years and never promoted despite an impeccable performance record, and Dirk and Satoshi even told me to my face that they would never even consider me for a promotion. Also, they rejected all my requests every year for equal pay when I discovered from WF’s internally published compensation guideline that I had been paid only at the entry point for a level lower than mine, even after nearly 6 years at a more senior level.

Please see below the timeline of what happened:

10–11/2018: Upon hiring Pascal, Dirk and Satoshi pressured me repeatedly to hang out with Pascal alone, outside the workplace, against my will, just to make him happy, and even threatened me with performance review and annual bonus cut if I didn’t obey. What they did was out of line so I fought back.

04/2019: Pascal stole two pairs of my dress shoes from under my desk in the office and hid in his drawer — very inappropriate and creepy. Upon finding out, I immediately told him no and that his behavior was unacceptable.

05/2019: The following month, Satoshi demoted/downgraded me from directly reporting to himself (as it had been ever since I joined WF in 2014), to directly reporting to Pascal who was a repeated offender to me, and had a bizarre interest in my very personal item of dress shoes.

02/2020: I reported to Commercial Banking senior executives on Dirk, Satoshi and Pascal’s series of unethical behaviors including: the very creepy shoe incident; forcing me repeatedly to hang out with Pascal alone outside the workplace against my will and subsequently demoting me to even directly report to Pascal; relentlessly covering up for Pascal’s repeated violations of the company’s paid-time-off policy for an appalling 22 times during his 1st year of employment alone (one-time “job abandonment” could possibly result in immediate termination according to the policy), which must be an unprecedented and insurmountable record in WF’s 168 years of history!

02–05/2020: Commercial Banking senior executives escalated my case to the company’s Conduct Management Group for investigation and copied HR. To my surprise, Conduct Management told me loud and clear that WF’s “speak up and non-retaliation” policy is only a guiding principle, but in practice, they would do nothing to protect my confidentiality and safety, or to protect me from retaliation by my managers. Conduct Management even threatened me to submit all evidence for my allegations within “48 hours” or I could face punitive corrective actions including termination — termination of me, the victim and whistleblower! Conduct Management indeed followed through on their outrageous practice by ignoring the evidence and concluding that my allegations were “unsubstantiated”.

04/2020: Despite the fact that I had an active and open case on Dirk’s long-term pattern of unethical behaviors and repeated misconduct, Commercial Banking senior executives, aware of my allegations, promoted Dirk once again to the leadership team, his 2nd promotion in merely two years.

05–07/2020: With his 2nd promotion secured and my case on them thrown out by Conduct Management, Dirk led Satoshi, Pascal and Jamey to launch months of retaliation against me by taking turns to maliciously bombard and intimidate me non-stop. They criticized me in the name of “not taking ownership for my work” for getting sick and taking just 1.5 days off my own paid sick leave, and I had taken 0 sick leave during my entire employment of over 5 years up until that point! They prohibited me from speaking during a performance feedback session, in fact, made it loud and clear that I was only allowed to listen and take orders, and threatened me numerous times that me voicing my opinion is a violation so serious called “insubordination” that they would escalate to HR — 1st clear sign that they were plotting to retaliate and fire me. As I stood up for justice and for myself by calling out the truth, Dirk partnered with HR to issue me a corrective action of “formal conduct warning” — 2nd clear sign that they were plotting to fire me.

07/2020: My managers issued me a mid-year performance review of the bottom rating — only given to the bottom 5% of the worst performing employees among WF’s over 260,000 employees, which was an outright joke and blatant retaliation because I had top-tier qualification (education and experience) and all consecutive years of impeccable annual performance reviews with this same group, as recent as 5 months ago in 02/2020! This was the 3rd clear sign that they were plotting to fire me.

07–08/2020: Conduct Management, together with Employee Relations, reached out to me again and tried to force me into saying in writing that I had never ever faced any discrimination at WF due to race or gender, after I told Dirk that I’m not the type who would ever develop the Stockholm Syndrome and could not take the non-stop torture and intimidation any longer. He was so anxious to fire me but in order to cover his tracks of blatant racism, sexism and retaliation, he brought in Conduct Management and Employee Relations to do something so sick and inhumane that was equivalent to: before murdering me, they force me to sign a statement swearing that they are not my killers, in exchange for a quick death instead of a much more painful slow death. Yes, I was on the brink of collapsing mentally and physically, but I would never be that weak or dumb.

08/05/2020: One day after I fought off Conduct Management’s collusion with Dirk, Dirk and Satoshi fired me the first thing in the morning at 9am over one phone call claiming “professionalism inappropriate conduct”. As mentioned, the firing was effective immediately, with no minimum 60-day notice, no severance for my nearly 6 years of service at WF, and even no paperwork, and I was instantly cut off of access to all company sites including 401(k), pay vouchers, and instructions on logistics of departure. They viciously destroyed my career, name and reputation, and threw me right into the cold in the midst of a country-wide pandemic and massive unemployment.

Dear Charlie, you joined WF one year ago with the goal of overhauling our very troubling practices and leading the company out of its endless public scandals, lawsuits and regulatory consent orders by the Fed and the OCC. From my nearly 6 years at the company, I can assure you that there has never been a shortage of minority and/or women talent at WF. The toxic culture, together with the nepotism and negligence of some racist and sexist managers who run their groups like unchallengeable dictators but get away with it or even better, get fast promoted, are what suppressed aspiring and hardworking minority and/or women talent like me from any career advancement. We have to do far more work, take far less pay, put up with bigotry, bullying and harassment, and most importantly, keep our chin down and mouth shut, just to survive and keep our paycheck, let alone wish for any career advancement or promotion opportunities. I was silent and suppressed like many of my diverse peers for over 5 years, until I was pushed up against the wall by my abusive managers and subsequently fooled by WF’s “speak up and non-retaliation” policy which turned out to be a career-suicidal trap for anyone who dares to speak the truth and report misconduct in the workplace.

My ordeal went far beyond personal between me and my four managers/superiors. HR, Employee Relations and Conduct Management all played their part, among which Conduct Management Group’s handling of my situation was particularly outrageous and concerning. As I’m sure you are aware, Conduct Management Group was established in 2017 as a direct response to numerous regulatory actions with the stated mission of encouraging employees to report misconduct in order to prevent future public scandals. However, my interaction with this Conduct Management Group was all about intimidation and retaliation against whistleblowers while relentlessly covering up managers’ unethical, racist and sexist behaviors. Change, fundamental change to the company’s culture, has been long overdue. To prevent other diverse employees from ever having to live through the horror of racism, sexism and whistleblower retaliation like mine in the workplace at WF, I make a plea to you, to please take actions, do what’s right and what’s necessary, because otherwise, it’s guaranteed that more scandals will come to light, and more regulatory actions will be enforced. What’s at stake here is not only the reputation and survival of the company, but also the interest of millions of shareholders and customers, and ultimately even the stability of the US banking system given that WF is the 3rd largest bank in the country.

Sincerely,

Angela Lu