Why safety is personal to me

I joined Uber in late 2017, during one of the most difficult periods in the company’s history. I was the first executive hired by Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to guide the company through a thicket of legal disputes and investigations, rebuild trust with regulators and public officials around the world, and help transform Uber into a more accountable company.

I came to Uber—even after reading the headlines—because I believed the company could have an enormously positive impact by expanding access to safe, reliable transportation and creating flexible earning opportunities for millions of people.

I was particularly eager to confront some of Uber’s hardest challenges involving safety, especially women’s safety, and I believed my work in both the public and private sectors equipped me well for that effort.

During the first several years of my career, I served as a federal prosecutor specializing in crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children. As an attorney in private practice for nearly a decade, I represented women pro bono who had been incarcerated after fighting back against their domestic violence abusers. And as a senior appointee and later the Associate Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama Administration, I oversaw the Office on Violence Against Women; partnered with state and local officials to address sexual assault on college campuses; and strengthened protections for Native American women and girls.

Those experiences shape how I approach my work at Uber every single day. It forms the basis of my conviction that if we make Uber safer for women, we make it safer for everyone. It is why I champion autonomy and choice for survivors. And it’s why I would never support or condone conduct—inside or outside a courtroom—that fails to treat women and survivors with dignity and respect. 

I’ll be the first to say that our adversarial legal system can be particularly tough for survivors. By its nature, the trial process is designed to extract facts and present evidence from all angles, so that a jury or judge may determine what happened in a given situation. And the fact that all of this occurs in public view makes it all the more difficult, especially when sensitive and deeply personal issues are discussed. 

I’ve seen how hard this can be on survivors. It’s why, as a prosecutor, I took pains never to put a survivor on the stand if there was any possible way I could prove my case through other means. It’s also why I’ve made clear to my legal team that they must always treat survivors with respect, compassion, courtesy and dignity, and that's exactly what I’ve seen them do. Defending the company in a lawsuit and treating survivors with humanity are not mutually exclusive; we must do both. 

While we’re not perfect, we seem to be achieving this balance. The federal judge conducting nearly all of the recent trials involving survivors has watched closely as Uber’s attorneys questioned witnesses on the stand and argued the company’s defense to the jury. “I don't think Uber has engaged in the slightest bit of shaming or dealing with this case with any insensitivity,” he said during a trial in February. “I’ve said a lot about Uber’s approach to the litigation, but in this area I want it clear that Uber has not engaged in anything that would be viewed as shaming a victim.” He added: “I mean, that’s clear on the record. Anybody in here has seen it, but I want it in the record.”

Those of us at Uber who work on safety believe strongly—informed by years of work with leading survivor advocacy organizations—that it’s a survivor’s choice as to whether, where, and how they share their experience. Years before Congress acted, Uber was among the first companies to end forced arbitration and mandatory confidentiality agreements in matters involving sexual assault and sexual harassment. Uber was also the first—and continues to be one of the only—companies to voluntarily and consistently publish data on the reports of sexual assault we receive. And we’re the only company to provide survivors with access to trauma-informed care, therapy, travel, and other healing resources with no release, no cost, no legal strings attached, and complete confidentiality.

We made those choices because we believed it was the right thing to do, even if it came with risk—of more lawsuits, large financial settlements, and critical media coverage. We did it anyway because safety isn’t ancillary to our business; it’s fundamental. And that means giving survivors more choices, providing the public with greater transparency, and always strengthening our own accountability.

There’s no question that our work over the last decade has made Uber safer, and that Uber leads the industry when it comes to safety. But it is also true that our work is never finished and that we must constantly push to do more on safety.