Skift set out to be a progressive media startup, but some insiders say the company failed women and people of color
- When travel media startup Skift launched in 2012, it espoused progressive values and said it would be covering the travel industry in an entirely new way.
- Business Insider spoke with three current and 13 former Skift employees, many of whom said there were times when women felt uncomfortable and mistreated in the workplace.
- They also said that the company's CEO, Rafat Ali, was an unpredictable leader whose behavior was sometimes unprofessional.
Sarah Enelow-Snyder, a Black biracial woman, was promoted twice during her time at the travel news startup Skift, eventually becoming a news editor. While she worked at Skift from June 2016 to January 2020, Black travel was one of her main areas of coverage.
She came up with the idea for a podcast about Black travel for Skift. But after she co-hosted the first episode in October 2016, she was met with harsh verbal criticism from Rafat Ali, Skift's CEO.
"He indicated that they talked too much, referring to the two Black female entrepreneurs that we had on the podcast episode with us," Enelow-Snyder said.
She and her cohost didn't do another episode of the podcast after that.
"I took his scathing review of the episode to be my invitation to shut up and not bring it up again," she said.
In June, Enelow-Snyder called out Skift and Ali in a series of tweets. "Black women are unwelcome @skift in my experience," she said.
Her tweets would spark a reckoning inside the company Ali launched with Jason Clampet in 2012, with the promise of being a different kind of travel news website.
Business Insider spoke to three current and 13 former Skift employees, many of whom said there were times when women felt uncomfortable or felt mistreated in the workplace.
They also said that Ali was an unpredictable leader whose anger was often directed at women, particularly women of color. Some of these employees requested anonymity for fear of retribution from the company.