Cutting ties: Chapter 24 of Surviving DEI at Adyen N.V.
The twenty fourth chapter of Surviving DEI at Adyen N.V. Marie-Anne Leuty (she/her) shares the experience of being allegedly invited into the fintech to do DEI work and The Study Group’s current legal fight to allegedly be recognised and paid for that culturally sensitive and important work.
Hi everyone,
My name’s Marie-Anne and you’re reading chapter 24 of 25 of an educational case study detailing The Study Group’s alleged experience doing specialist DEI work for fintech giant, Adyen N.V.
When I started to write this blog on 27 November 2023, I never envisaged it becoming a 30,000 (and counting) word research paper.
It just came pouring out.
A month later on 26 December 2023, we published this on The Quick + The Brave, our independent, BIPOC founded media platform, evoking the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act of 18 February 2023.
It’s also available in full here on Medium.
In this chapter, two weeks after the last meeting with Adyen N.V.’s Vice President of Creative, we were allegedly notified by email from the Senior Legal Counsel of Adyen N.V. on 22 September 2023 that the partnership was being terminated by our Program Partner with immediate effect.
No reason was allegedly given for this seemingly knee jerk action.
Through community connections, The Study Group was able to find legal advocacy through Stichting BEULAH, a Black-owned legal aid non-profit organisation.
Our Legal Counsel starts correspondence with DLA Piper Nederland N.V. , the Dutch chapter of the second largest law firm in the United States and Adyen N.V.’s legal representation.
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The full 30,000 word educational case study was first published on The Quick + The Brave. Visit the blog to read and see full image galleries.
Learn more about and support The Study Group Foundation.
Pre-sale for ‘mini maatje’ ‘Advocates and Allies’ issue soon available via The Quick + The Brave.
By publishing this blog, The Study Group evokes the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act (Wet bescherming klokkenluiders) of 18 February 2023.
The full act from the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations is available in Dutch and English.
Want to help amplify our story to other media? The Act protects all stakeholders who share it (clause 1a. Duty of confidentiality and data protection).
Chapter 24: Cutting ties
After the meeting, we shared a summary of what was discussed with Adyen N.V.:
For the next steps of the collaboration, we understand that there’s continued scope to work with Adyen N.V. on:
1. [BRAND NAME REDACTED] projects (design and communication program, podcast, work book, lunch events)
2. Internal projects (Adyen annual report etc)
– Email extract from The Study Group to Adyen N.V.
Hold up.
Were we really allegedly being invited to come and work in-house at Adyen N.V?
And, once again, where was the discussion about the alleged budget?
Adyen N.V. allegedly proposed we come in for full days in the Design Studio to work on its internal projects.
While we were still allegedly owed money for the work carried out in the first half of the year.
Make it make sense, please.
Ten days since the meeting, and the day before we were due to spend the day at the Design Studio at the Rokin office, I emailed our contact.
The alleged lack of transparency was absurd.
A boundary had to be set.
How was this fair?
Not for the first time, we added our accountant in CC:
Hello [NAME REDACTED],
I hope you’re doing well.
I wanted to get back to your message about coming in tomorrow.
We’d love to continue work on the project however, going on your advice of business before creative, it would be good for us to address the elephant in the room regarding the [BRAND NAME REDACTED] program budget.
I feel uncomfortable spending time outlining next steps on work without a clear understanding of the available budget and a good understanding of what our sponsor can commit to as we close the second year of the program.
With this in mind, is it better for us to have a meeting / call once we have clarity from [NAME REDACTED]?
I relayed our call at the end of last week to our accountants (in CC) who have previously raised concerns about late payments from Adyen N.V. and the unexpected budget cut mid-project of over 50% — they’re concerned that as a small company we are being taken advantage of. They’ve advised us not to spend any more billable time at Adyen N.V. without formalised agreements on next steps for the project.
They’ve also strongly advised us to request advance payment so we can better manage finances.
As I hope you can appreciate, we want to continue to build on the foundation we’ve already set but we need to know what Adyen N.V. can commit to as a sponsor so that we can plan and manage our business.
As it stands, with mounting bills and a frozen account, our studio and printer are in jeopardy. Our creatives are concerned and expressed their discomfort with the current situation. Our hope was that we could fix our deficit within Q3 so we could enter Q4 with some peace of mind. Q2 was exceptionally difficult and we continue to deal with the fallout. For the sake of our business and community partners, we need clarity so we can manage the expectations of suppliers.
We’re excited to see [BRAND NAME REDACTED] grow — however as the initiators of the program, we’re responsible to the community who come in and set time aside to work on the project. The impact of the lack of clarity and resource hasn’t just affected us but also them. It doesn’t seem appropriate for us as a Program Partner invited into Adyen N.V. to take initiative to develop the project to its current point, build visibility in the community and not have the peace of mind or financial stability sponsorship sets out to provide.
We want to be well aligned and equipped so that we can work from a safer position with Adyen N.V., keep the business and program going and have a positive community impact.
We’re happy to adapt plans where needed and welcome reassurance from our sponsor that the original agreed budget from our first proposal can be honoured.
This week I need to communicate to community partners what the next steps for the program look like. We’ve been quiet in Q3 due to parental leave but as we come back to work and enter Q4 we need to be able to provide transparency and manage expectations.
Please let me know how the discussion with [NAME REDACTED] goes.
I’m not sure when you’re talking with the wider team but please find the (close to final) unlisted draft of episode 001 of the podcast including the intro sequence on YouTube.
The updated ‘powered by Adyen’ logo at the end of the podcast is available to download.
– Email from The Study Group to Adyen N.V.
Meanwhile, we continued to wait on alleged feedback from HR.
Ten days since coming into the Rokin office with our son to present the team’s final work, we still had no response.
When could we expect to hear back?
HR was travelling to San Francisco — travel and time difference allegedly delayed the meeting.
On 18 September, we sent over the requested changes to Adyen N.V.’s branding on the podcast and a link to the unlisted final episode of the podcast presented at the meeting.
Despite still waiting on his invoice to be fulfilled, the video director understood the situation and helped us to make the changes.
We messaged the Vice President of Creative again on 19 September when we didn’t hear back to our email.
He’d said that allegedly he’d know more by the end of the next day.
It remained evident that our need for an urgent resolution wasn’t a priority.
When we didn’t hear back, Obi tried to call our contact a few times but he allegedly didn’t pick up.
On Friday 22 September around 4:30pm, Adyen N.V.’s Senior Legal Counsel emailed us.
Included in CC from Adyen N.V. were the Head of People, Senior Vice President of HR, Head of Legal EMEA and Vice President of Creative.
It felt heavy handed.
Adyen N.V. allegedly terminated our collaboration with the following:
Dear Marie-Anne
Thank you for your note. After carefully considering your email below as well as our internal assessment of events related to our collaboration with the Study Group over the 2022 and 2023, we have decided to end our association with the Study Group with immediate effect. For the avoidance of doubt, as of today’s date, Adyen will no longer fund any projects, expenses or costs incurred by the Study Group after today’s date, 22 September 2023, nor will we require any work completed on current outstanding projects.
We would also like to extend an offer of invitation to our offices for a face-to-face meeting to address any items that you may believe are outstanding and where Adyen could potentially offer some guidance to close these items off. In that meeting we would also be happy to share with you the concerns and considerations which resulted in our decision to end our association/collaboration if that is helpful.
Going forward we will continue all correspondence between the Study Group and Adyen via my email address and we request you to do the same.
We would like to thank the Study Group for the past collaboration with Adyen and wish the Study Group continued success.
Regards,
[NAME REDACTED]
– Email from Senior Legal Counsel of Adyen N.V. to The Study Group
Wow.
We were shocked.
What do you even say to that?
Was this really how Adyen N.V. was allegedly moving?
We worked for 81 weeks for the multi-billion euro tech company allegedly without a formal contract.
We answered their supposed brief and brought specialised talent from the community directly into the building.
We were engaging with Adyen N.V.’s work culture, aligning with Employee Resource Groups to to release the long awaited podcast.
We were quite literally in the window.
Just like that, the program we and our community had been pushing for, striving for, was allegedly dropped like a hot potato by a team (at best) seemingly lacking the awareness about the implications of their combined action, inaction and bias.
Our contact towed the company line too.
Two weeks after the Vice President of Creative held our first born child, he was in CC on the termination email.
The sad fact of the matter is that this kind of thing happens all the time.
People’s life passions axed overnight with no thought of consequence, everything they’ve fought to build destroyed because it didn’t merit care or attention.
But we’re an independent media platform.
We document everything.
Holding on to so much evidence is actually uncomfortable.
It wasn’t our intention to have all these files turn into evidence to support a legal fight.
We were documenting the progress of a design and communication program for emerging BIPOC and LGBTQ+ creatives.
We considered the offer to go in to talk with Adyen N.V.’s Legal team and thought better of it.
I called the law firm who helped me with the settlement when I left my last tech job.
Having never needed a lawyer before, it was a helpful experience for our current situation. But they were a top law firm charging top law firm prices.
On hearing the story, the lawyer apologised on behalf of large businesses for the way we were treated.
They suggested we might want to look for more affordable options but that we had a case and were right to seek out legal representation. We appreciated the insight.
We started to reach out to share our story with advocates who might be able to help.
Our doula found the details in a Black-owned business chat for a non-profit organisation based in Aruba called The BEULAH Foundation.
One advocate led us to the other.
It was a chain reaction.
Reading more about them, the Legal Aid organisation seemed the right choice for us. Named after the Founder’s late mother, the name BEULAH stands for:
Black
Empowerment
Unity
Liberty
Advocacy
Human Rights
With a strong emphasis on educating the community about our rights, I got in touch and shared our story. On hearing our case, the Founder — a Black woman and a parent — agreed to work with us as our Legal Counsel.
It was a huge relief to have found an advocate who understood first hand and could articulate the issues that we were facing professionally and legally.
Like us, she saw this as an educational opportunity.
Other independent BIPOC businesses and freelancers would stand to benefit from learning about this complex and challenging case study, knowing their rights and how to exert them through their business practices.
We started to build the case and sent correspondence to DLA Piper Nederland N.V. through our Legal Counsel.
By publishing this blog, The Study Group evokes the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act (Wet bescherming klokkenluiders) of 18 February 2023.
The full act from the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations is available in Dutch and English.
Want to help amplify our story to other media? The Act protects all stakeholders who share it (clause 1a. Duty of confidentiality and data protection).
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