L
a st November more tha n 20,000 Goog le
employees around the globe walked out of
work in protest after a New York Times arti-
cle revealed that the search giant had paid
hefty exit packages to two male executives
(most notably, $90 million to Android founder Andy Rubin)
accused of sexual misconduct. Google otherwise did little to
litigate the claims, though it would go on to review its work-
place policies once the public outcr y beca me inter nationa l
news. The media immediately turned to Lisa Borders, the
newly minted leader of Time’s Up, to comment on th is abuse
of power. It was her first day on the job.
“ We were bor n out of tragedy, to be fa ir,” says Borders,
61, referring to the watershed moment at the start of 2018,
when 300 of Holly wood’s brightest stars and executives
were joined by a union of 700,000 female farmworkers to
say enough was enough. “I think in our minds we go, ‘Oh,
it’s just these traditional industries,’” she says. “Then you
get something like [what happened at] Google. Perhaps it
was unrealistic, but we expected their behavior to be bet-
ter, of a higher order, and it wasn’t.”
That trial-by-fire experience tapped directly into the skills
Borders honed at her previous high-level positions: president
of the Atlanta City Council (she even ran for mayor in 2009),
v ice president of g loba l commu n it y a ffa irs at Coca- Cola , a nd
president of the WNBA for three seasons. “Call that my train-
ing camp, if you will,” says Borders of the latter. “That’s where
I developed even more muscle memory and muscle mass
a rou nd th is notion of fig hting on beha l f of women.” Borders
is so connected to the players that to this day, she won’t reveal
her favorite team, as if they were her kids. She says her actual
son, 36-year-old Dijon Bowden, is her “2.0.” She considers
him “a better version [of me] than I would ever be: more com-
petent, confident, and compassionate.”
It would be hard to imagine someone more compassion-
ate than Borders, with her no-nonsense yet endearing
conversational style. So when she speaks about the “bad
behavior” in the workplace that is still holding too many
women back, you know she’s dedicated to fixing it.
“Bringing people together to know that they’re not alone
is job one,” she says, adding that of the workers Time’s Up is
helping, 40 percent are people of color and 60 percent iden-
tify as low-income. To date, the organization has brought on
800 attorneys to help those who can’t afford to hire counsel.
Th is is pa id for by Time’s Up’s Lega l Defense Fu nd at the
National Women’s Law Center, which has amassed $22
mi l lion on GoFu nd Me—the most ever ra ised on the
platform. “That sounds like a lot of money until you look at
the depth and the breadth of the problem,” says Borders.
“We have had 3,500 people reach out to us. There are some
60 cases underway, ranging from the cashier at a dollar
store in Brooklyn to female paramedics in Chicago.”
Borders explains that Time’s Up has a three-pronged ap-
proach to solv ing such a n impossibly la rge problem, wh ich is
to look at companies, culture, and laws. “Laws are really the
place where you can find discrete legislation that we would
i nv ite fol k s to consider cha ng ing ,” she says. “ I ser ved a s a n
elected official, so I understand that federal law trumps state,
and state trumps city, but you have to start somewhere.”
For those who think Time’s Up is little more than a Holly-
wood fad, th in k aga in. The orga n ization is enter ing its
second year and has already lined
106 InSTYLE FEBRUARY 2019
As the first president and CEO of Time’s Up, LISA BORDERS is
turning the organization into way more than a movement
by LAURA NORKIN photographed by JEREMY LIEBMAN
Her
Tıme
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 134)