Fortune - USA (2020-12)

ILLUSTRATION BY JOAN WONG

appearing, eight months pregnant and unquestionably powerful,

on the cover of an issue of Inc. magazine devoted to female startup

founders. “My hope is that women see this and feel the confidence

to take greater professional risks, while also not shelving their

dreams of becoming a mother and starting a family,” she told the

Today show on the morning that the cover was released.

Then it started to crumble. Some Black customers were already

sharing on social media and in the press the discomfort they

sometimes felt at the Wing and its “ majority-white” space. And in

March, The New York Times Magazine published a long feature

about what employees called the Wing’s “toxic culture,” includ-

ing complaints about pay and scheduling for hourly workers and

Wing managers’ poor handling of incidents, such as one in which

a customer referred to Black and brown employees as “colored

girls.” Then, as COVID-19 shut down the Wing’s physical loca-

tions and threw its business future into question, George Floyd’s

killing by Minneapolis police sparked a national reckoning over

racism—amplifying the voices of women who said the Wing

had failed to live up to its feminist rhetoric of sisterhood for all.

Current and former workers, including many laid off amid the

pandemic, protested the company’s attempted response to the

Black Lives Matter movement and Gelman’s leadership.

L

AST FALL, Audrey Gelman

seemed to be on top of the busi-

ness world—or at least one pale-

pink corner of it. At 32 years old,

the former political operative and

well-connected New Yorker had

raised more than $117 million in venture capi-

tal for the Wing, the upscale women’s club and

coworking startup she had cofounded in 2016.

Women from Los Angeles to London flocked to

the Wing’s pastel-painted offices and star-stud-

ded events, where movie stars and presidential

candidates alike talked about “asking for what

you want” and “blazing your own trail.”

By September 2019, Gelman was celebrat-

ing her professional and personal triumphs by

IT’S HOT IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The ranks of powerful women who have been forced out of the

companies they created continue to grow. Now some in the startup

world are asking: Are female founders being unfairly targeted?

By MARIA ASPAN

FEMALE

FOUNDERS

UNDER

FIRE

INVESTOR’S GUIDE • FEMALE FOUNDERS

ORIGINAL IMAGES, GELMAN: JEAN BAPTISTE LACROIX—WIREIMAGEGETTY IMAGES; KOREY: DIA DIPASUPIL—GETTY IMAGES; HANEY: NICHOLAS HUNT—

GETTY IMAGES