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Kimberly Watkins, a former employee of Andrew Yang, has accused the Democratic presidential hopeful of firing her from her job because she got married.
“Despite my hitting every single revenue mark set for me, despite not a single employment infraction over the six years, Andrew Yang fired me because I got married,” Kimberly Watkins wrote in an article posted to Medium on Thursday, prior to her testimony to NYC Commission on Gender Equity on pay equality.
Watkins claims she worked as a Senior Director under Yang at test prep company Manhattan GMAT from 2001 to 2007.
“Andrew and I worked well together, and had a high level of mutual professional respect,” she said.
Watkins claims in her article that when she returned from her two-and-a-half week honeymoon in October 2007, Yang called her into his office.
“And behind closed doors, he opined that I wouldn’t want to keep working as hard as I had now that I’d started this new personal chapter,” Watkins wrote. “That as a married woman, I’d want to focus on my new life.”
“And just like that, my new life was shattered. My financial security was blown to bits,” she later added.
Watkins was given a monthly payment plan as part of her termination, which handed down a portion of her salary over the course of two years.
“We even conjured a lie about my departure, that I was willingly leaving, in order for me to save face. I was so broken, so shattered that I chose to keep a secret about my departure in order to save myself from the embarrassment.”
Meanwhile, Yang is under fire for comments he made Thursday at a climate forum held by MSNBC at Georgetown University. In a video that has emerged on YouTube, Yang states that Americans are becoming “less rational” with a lower IQ due to financial stress, before tying opposition to the Green New Deal to diminished cognitive function.
WIBC host Tony Katz responded to Yang’s comments Friday morning. Click below to hear what he had to say.
