A former Citigroup executive alleges in a new race and sex discrimination lawsuit that she was bullied and humiliated by male leaders who were protected by a "weaponized" human resources department at the company, in keeping with Citi's "long history of hostility toward women."
Plaintiff Julia Carreon, employed to lead a digital transformation at Citi until her constructive discharge in 2024, contends, among other allegations, that she was debased by gossip about her professional relationship with Citi wealth head Andy Sieg, who failed to refute the sexual innuendo, the lawsuit against Citi states.
"After Carreon had achieved too much success and established herself as a serious contender for the inner circle of executives, Citi cut short her career through a harassment campaign condoned and at times spearheaded by Citi's weaponized Human Resources department," the complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for New York's Southern District, alleges.
"Today I filed a lawsuit against Citibank. My lawyer spent 14 months trying to resolve this matter privately but Citi's lawyer said he welcomed a public match," Carreon posted on LinkedIn.
"This lawsuit has absolutely no merit and we will demonstrate that through the legal process," Citi said in a statement emailed to ThinkAdvisor on Tuesday.
Carreon, who served as global head of platform and experiences at Citi, contends that in 2021, the company, seeking to catch up with financial services industry peers, "hotly recruited Carreon to bring her expertise to Citi to transform the company's digital experience for a newly created Wealth management division that was part of Jane Fraser's core strategy when she was named CEO."
"Although Citi had earned a reputation as a male-centered, 'boys club' firm, Carreon hoped to be at least somewhat insulated from that dynamic because she was recruited to work side by side with a woman named Deb Waters, the Chief Technology Officer ("CTO") for Citi Wealth," the complaint states.
However, she contends, little has changed for women at Citi since a 1996 class action lawsuit against Citi predecessor Smith Barney, commonly known as the "'Boom Boom Room' case, after the nickname of a nightmarish basement party room of a branch office where sexual harassment against women was rampant and condoned."
Carreon's complaint cites an alleged "revolving door of women victims who crash into Citi's glass ceiling and Citi jettisons from its upper echelons." A victim of this culture, Carreon "was harassed and sidelined when she succeeded because she ruffled the feathers of the all-male COOs affected by the changes" she put into place, the lawsuit alleges.
"When she finally appeared to gain a champion for her work, Head of Wealth Andy Sieg, Citi's discriminatory and sexually harassing culture reduced her to being perceived as a sex object — that she could not possibly have reached those heights on her own merit, but must have been sleeping with her boss, which was untrue," the suit contends.
"With Sieg failing to refute the suspicion and sexual innuendo, Carreon was debased and humiliated, subjected to pervasive gossip and discredited because of the widespread false assumption that she was not competent but was promoted for having an affair with Sieg," it alleges. When human resources investigated Citi's and Sieg's alleged harassment, "it subjected Carreon — not Sieg — to a misogynistic investigation into their professional relationship," the suit alleges.
Citi supported Sieg following the probe, with the wealth chief remaining in his position and Jane Fraser telling Bloomberg TV she was "very comfortable with the way we came out." The Financial Times reported in October that investigators hadn't interviewed some women who had made complaints.
Carreon's lawsuit cites the Bloomberg report and contends that "in recent years, Citi has unleashed a torrent of discriminatory job moves, pushing high-ranking women out and replacing them with men. Plaintiff is aware of at least a dozen high-level women who were pushed out of Citi in just the last few years."
Carreon previously worked as chief digital and fiduciary operations officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank for more than 15 years, the suit says.
Longtime chief operating officers at Citi were reluctant to embrace the changes Carreon was making, and she "was taken aback by the visceral negative reaction that some employees had to her, as a woman of color, implementing those changes," the suit contends. "When the change Carreon brought to streamline Citi's operations inevitably ruffled the feathers of the mostly white and all-male group of COOs, Citi's pervasive sexist culture allowed these men to denigrate and harass Carreon without any fear of consequences."
A male CTO replaced Waters and "made clear that he was threatened by Carreon," the suit contends, among other allegations.
Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
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