A16 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 3 , 2020
COMPANIES
Ernst & Young of the
District appointed Bryon
Christensen U.S. tax
controversy leader.
Intelligent Waves of Reston
appointed Heidi Pirela chief
human resources officer.
ASSOCIATIONS
A ND NONPROFITS
American Association of
Residential Mortgage
Regulators of the District
appointed David Saunders
executive director.
American Cleaning Institute
of the District appointed
Arielle Brown senior manager
for government affairs and
Kaitlyn Doherty coordinator
for meetings and member
services.
Fairtrade America of the
District appointed Peg
Willingham executive director.LAW AND LOBBYING
Hirschler Law of Tysons
appointed David Swan partner
in the firm’s bankruptcy group.
McGlinchey Stafford of the
District appointed Devin
Leary-Hanebrink of counsel.Ogletree Deakins of the
District appointed Jessica
Lamb of counsel.
Steptoe of the District
appointed William Keyser
partner in the firm’s energy
practice.
Wiley of the District
appointed Ann Begley partner
and Gary Yingling senior
counsel.Send information about
promotions, appointments and
personnel moves in the Washington
region to
[email protected].capital business
APPOINTMENTSCompany Insider Title Date Action Shares Price Now holds
Cogent Communications Holdings John B. Chang Officer July 21 Sold 500 85 26,
Danaher Daniel L. Comas Officer July 24 to July 27 Sold 100,032 190.99 to 201.53 139,
Linda P. Hefner Director July 27 Sold 2,754 197 38,
Thomas Patrick Joyce Jr. Chief executive July 24 Sold 181,394 191.04 to 197.01 208,
William H. King Officer July 28 Sold 26,982 199.05 to 199.19 21,
Walter G. Lohr Jr. Director July 28 Sold 57,000 198.56 391,
John T. Schwieters Director July 24 Sold 6,014 191.01 to 195.37 35,
Joakim Weidemanis Officer July 27 Sold 19,834 196 92,
MacroGenics Eric Risser Officer July 27 Sold 4,489 25.13 to 25.63 44,
T homson Financial
Trading as reported by companies’ directors, presidents, chief financial officers, general counsel, chief executives,
chairmen and other officers, or by beneficial owners of more than 10 percent of a company’s stock.
TRANSACTIONS
holding on to staff as best he
could, though sometimes in
different capacities.
“A s a small-business owner,
you have to survive,” he said.
“We had to pivot. We changed
our model to make it into small-
group personal training.”
The business is more than
just a livelihood to Burley.
“I literally created this thing,
grew it from the ground,” he
said. “It took a lot of grit and
hard work, but we went from
being just a pop-up to a full-
fledged studio.”
B urley grew up in West
Baltimore, the middle of three
sons, who found “inspiration,
motivation and acceptance”
through fitness. “I was
overweight and dealt with self-
esteem issues. I played every
sport you can think of.”
When he was 18, his mother
died of a heart ailment. “I
learned quickly life is short,” he
said. But the loss also made him
“more compassionate, makes
me see a bigger picture.”
He went to the University of
North Carolina, graduating in
2005 with a degree in sports
medicine. He landed a j ob at
Bowie State University, as
director of sports medicine.
“I didn’t know what I was
doing, and didn’t know what I
didn’t know,” he said. “I think
not knowing is a good trait,
because we are sometimes held
back in life by fears of messing
up. Like an infant who stumbles
and falls, you just get back up.
The further you go in life,
people tend to second- and
triple-guess yourself. You lose
confidence, and confidence is
the most important thing in the
world.”
In 2009, after four years at
Bowie State and earning a
master’s degree in health and
fitness, Burley followed his
partner, who worked for theGerard Burley
had grown his
Park View fitness
studio, Sweat DC,
into a sweet spot.
It had 200
members, mostly
women in their
30s and 40s,
paying $140 to
$260 a month for
his workouts. It
was grossing more than
$40,000 every four weeks,
comfortably covering Burley’s
14-member payroll, rent and
other expenses, and he had just
expanded his fitness floor and
added a smoothie bar.
“We were in our prime spot,
coming off one of our best
Januarys and Februarys,” Burley
said. “February, March and April
are when we make our money.”
That all changed on March 15,
when the pandemic forced him
to make a hard pivot, recasting
his business top to bottom.
Burley, 37, immediately froze
memberships so clients
wouldn’t be charged while stay-
at-home orders were in effect.
He held off on making rent at
the Georgia Avenue location,
though he’s in talks to resolve
the issue, but stayed on top of
tax and utility payments.
He remade his business plan,
downsizing classes from 30
people to five to allow for social
distancing and started offering
virtual classes, called Sweat
Anywhere, and an outdoor boot
camp. He partnered with Hook
Hall, a nearby space where he is
moving his business in August,
and cut prices.
T o make ends meet, he took a
job as a leadership consultant at
Call Your Mother Deli. And he
secured a $30,000 loan through
the federal Paycheck Protection
Program, which covered payroll
and the new Sweat Anywhere
app. He also did some triage,
Responding to pandemic
a fitness test like no other
Value
Added
THOMAS
HEATH
“to create something bigger
than me.”
Sweat DC has taken a hit —
the 200 pre-pandemic clients
have dwindled to the 20 or 30 a
week who attend his outdoor
boot camps — but Burley is
doing what he has to do to keep
it going.
Having just a few clients “is a
simple process and stress-free,”
he said. Ultimately, “you have to
figure out what is happiness to
you.”
[email protected]employed a disc jockey and used
lighting to create a nightclub
atmosphere.
He attracted clients through
networking, and business grew
fast. Within a year, he had 20
clients and was teaching at least
24 sessions a week.
“I was pretty booked,” he said.
“If you are one trainer, you don’t
need more clients than that.”
He soon changed the name to
Sweat DC, and hopes one day to
have a Sweat LA, Sweat Atlanta
and others. The idea, he said, isturned a liability of not
speaking Italian into an
advantage. The owner at the
salon connected me to English
speakers, some German, some
English, some Australians.”
By the time he left Rome in
September 2012, he said he had
three trainers working for him.
When he and his partner
returned to Washington, Burley
opened a pop-up studio called
Sweat Fitness Party in Adams
Morgan. The goal was to make it
fun to work out, and heForeign Service, to Rome. It was
there that he got his first taste of
entrepreneurship, starting a
health and fitness blog in the
U.S. Embassy newsletter. He
started training State
Department employees,
including high-ranking officials,
and then expanded his client
base through people he met at a
popular salon.
“It’s knocking on doors. I
knew if you wanted clients, you
go see hairdressers and
cosmetologists,” he said. “IMARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST
Gerard Burley, fitness coach and founder of Sweat DC, has changed gears to keep his business going during the public health crisis. Burley
is looking ahead: He aims to have a Sweat LA, Sweat Atlanta and others. The idea, he said, is “to create something bigger than me.”Trump administration that
significantly eased federal civil
rights oversight of local law
enforcement” and possibly
enabled more police abuses.
Y et as POGO authors Daniel
Van Schooten and Nick
Schwellenbach note,
“retrospective oversight is no
substitute for mechanisms...
that offer a protected channel for
employees to propose policy
changes or point out concerns
with policies before a disaster
occurs.”
T hat’s what the dissent
channels are designed to do.
Most agencies don’t provide
dedicated channels for dissent.
The report authors found only a
half-dozen.
T he first one was created in
1971 after William Rogers,
secretary of state during the
Nixon administration, realized
he wasn’t getting accurate
information about the Vietnam
War. It’s not used much, only five
to 10 times a year.
A State Department statement
did not directly address
questions about its Dissent
Channel, but did say that “this is
an important process that the
Secretary and State Department
senior leadership value and
respect.... We welcome all
points of view and opinions as
part of this process.”
U sage might be low because
the agency’s Dissent Channel
seems useless to some employees.
Citing a dissenter who criticized
responses as “mealy-mouth,” the
report said that “it’s common for
dissenters to receive a response
that does not engage the merits
of the dissent.”
E ven worse is when the
response is retaliation.
Raymond Gallucci of Frederick
knows about that. He described
his NRC experience two years ago
in a 2017 letter to The
Washington Post.
“I have filed three differing
professional opinions, and I have
found myself not being assigned
to projects or excluded from
working groups on which I am
‘the’ agency expert, or being
denied support for professional
conferences that others with
smaller roles and fewer
presentations are permitted to
attend,” Gallucci wrote, adding,
“It is a sad state when one is
ostracized for speaking up.”
[email protected]ambassadors Marie Yovanovitch
and Gordon D. Sondland, who
lost their high-powered positions
after telling the truth about
President Trump during House
hearings that led to his
impeachment.
One prominent use of protest
platforms occurred in 2017 when
1,000 State Department
employees used its Dissent
Channel to complain about
Trump’s initial travel ban against
some Muslim-majority countries.
Fanning the fear of retribution,
then-White House press
secretary Sean Spicer said the
dissenters should “get with the
program or they can go.”
The report noted a
“heightened risk of retaliation
against dissenters under the
current administration.” It said
“despite professing to prize
independent and critical
thought, bureaucracies often
tend to penalize it in practice,
especially when it... might
embarrass or anger agency
leadership and even the White
House.”
Data from the Best Places to
Work in the Federal Government
report, compiled by the
Partnership for Public Service
from federal employee surveys
over 10 years, indicate steadily
increasing agreement that
employees can disclose violations
“without fear of reprisal.”
Yet, the portion never
exceeded 67 percent, which
means almost 700,
employees disagree.
Although Trump’s acts of
revenge are notably egregious,
reprisals against federal
whistleblowers are not bound by
party or administration.
Procedures designed to facilitate
“open, creative, and uncensored
dialogue,” as the State
Department describes its
channel, frequently do not,
particularly before bad things
happen.
The report suggests that future
reviews of Trump administration
policies related to the
coronavirus pandemic may
unearth instances of federal
employees whose unheeded
warnings might have saved lives.
Similarly, the report says a
future look back at the
“innumerable unjust deaths of
Black Americans at the hands of
police” could result in a revisit of
“policy changes made early in theTo create a safe
space for
criticism, a few
agencies, starting
with the State
Department
almost 50 years
ago, created
internal,
dedicated
complaint
procedures. But a
new report by an outside
watchdog organization indicates
they fall short in their mission.
Although some employees use
the mechanisms without
reprisal, “many federal
employees say these channels are
a waste of time, and that they
fear retaliation... or have faced
reprisal from agency
management for using them,”
says the report by the nonprofit
Project On Government
Oversight, or POGO. “There
appear to be few public success
stories where use of dissent
channels led to change, or
factored into a serious
reconsideration of policies.”
C onsider the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. Its
Differing Professional Opinion
program’s “rare degree of
transparency is laudable,” the
report says, “even as it reveals a
troubling picture.”
Citing a 2016 survey, the report
says 100 percent of responding
NRC employees felt the agency’s
process “led to negative
consequences, such as changes to
their professional
responsibilities or being
excluded from meetings or career
development opportunities.”
In a statement, the NRC said it
“continues to work to resolve
differing views on agency
regulatory actions with no fear of
reprisal by the employees for
their perspectives.”
Complaint pathways generally
include an internal agency
website for staff comments that
are reviewed by a designated
office, which sends them to the
appropriate official. Some
agencies allow anonymous
comments, and some do not.
Whatever the process,
whistleblowing is a risky
business for federal employees.
Retaliation is real for many feds
who dare to speak against
wrongs.
Just ask retired L t. Col.
Alexander Vindman and formerFederal
Insider
JOE
DAVIDSONFederal dissent channels falling short
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