Bo Young Lee led the sessions to delve into the experiences of white American women. Uber confirmed that Lee had taken a leave of absence as it figures out “next steps.” She has held the DEI role for five years.

The “Don’t Call Me Karen” sessions were part of a “Moving Forward” series hosted over Zoom for up to 500 employees and promoted as “diving into the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience from some of our female colleagues, particularly how they navigate around the ‘Karen’ persona”. The “Moving Forward” series more broadly hosted discussions on race and the experience of people of color amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

“Karen” has been used to call out white women perceived to be entitled and who report on Black people or other people of color to police or other authorities. Uber staff via an internal Slack channel dedicated to Black and Latino workers complained about the “Karen” sessions being insensitive to people of color. One Black employee commented that “It was more of a lecture–I felt like I was being scolded for the entirety of that meeting.”

Read the full article from The Guardian.