Jennifer Sey (@jennifersey) said she was on track to be the first female CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. until she resigned after over two decades at the jeans maker after facing pressure to stay quiet about her opposition to San Francisco’s public school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Throughout the pandemic, Sey was vocal about the policies impacting children, including the closure of schools and playgrounds, the masking of toddlers, learning loss, the increased educational gap, and the mental health crisis among teens that resulted from these closures. In February 2022, Sey, then-Brand President of Levi Strauss & Co., resigned and published an op-ed in Bari Weiss’s Common Sense (now The Free Press) where she revealed that she was offered $1 million in severance if she signed a non-disclosure agreement. She chose to forfeit the money and tell her story in the new book, “Levi’s Unbuttoned: The Woke Mob Took My Job But Gave Me My Voice.”
In this episode, Sey discusses her time at Levis, joining as a marketing assistant in 1999, rising to Chief Marketing Officer, a role she held for several years, and her promotion to Global Brand President in October 2020. In January 2022, she was asked to resign because of her social media posts that were critical of COVID mandates.
Topics featured in the episode include woke capitalism infiltrating corporate America, cancel culture, policy failures during the pandemic, free speech, the political divide, why there shouldn’t be pandemic amnesty, and more.
Sey, the 1986 USA Gymnastics National Champion and a 7-time member of the U.S. Women’s National Team, also revisited her time as an elite gymnast and why she walked away from the sport ahead of the 1988 Olympics. She is the author of the book “Chalked Up,” which detailed the coaching cruelty in the sport, and the producer of the Emmy award-winning documentary “Athlete A.”
0:00 Intro
1:06 An ‘unusual childhood’ as an elite gymnast
2:00 Gymnastics rife with abuse
3:30 Too broken to continue
5:00 Said the thing you’re not supposed to say out loud
6:23 Thoughts on quitting
9:26 Imposter syndrome
12:21 Early career after Stanford
15:50 Overcoming the doubters
18:38 CMO is a very slippery seat
20:00 Live In Levi’s campaign
22:22 No raise, no equity
26:05 No stock payout at the IPO
26:41 ‘Use your voice’
28:00 Speaking out during COVID
30:56 The ‘controversial’ tweets
32:12 An ‘unacceptable’ ‘problematic’ view
33:58 The Fox News appearance
35:00 The viral Twitter thread
35:36 The email before the ‘apology tour’
37:29 A dark time, treated as a ‘toxic employee’
39:00 ‘It’s really cult-like’
39:44 Promoted to brand president in October 2020
40:53 Told she was a candidate for CEO
41:28 Submitted to a background check
43:00 Offered $1M severance to walk away quietly
45:30 Vaccine mandate
46:30 Wrote book to encourage folks to speak up
47:19 Why are people quiet?
48:50 Views on political binary
51:50 A return to corporate America?
53:25 Should there be COVID amnesty?
56:29 Lessons for children
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