I want to begin by apologizing to Frances. I recognize that she experienced real harm from action and inaction taken by people at CEA, including me, and I wish we had gotten this right from the beginning without Frances needing to advocate for herself at such personal cost. Sexual harassment has no place at CEA or in EA more broadly, CEA made substantial mistakes, and it is important that we do better in the future.
I appreciate that Frances and other readers desire more transparency about what happened here. I want to share some additional context because I want to fully acknowledge the nature of how CEA made certain mistakes and how we need to act differently in the future. I also want to acknowledge there are frustrating legal limitations on what I can share, and by default I will be unable to engage with comments or questions that require further disclosure. To be clear, in no way is any of the information I am sharing intended to change the fact that I fully believe CEA made serious mistakes, for which I am very sorry.
In the fall of 2024, Riley went to HR with the document Frances references to share complaints about a colleagueās behavior. Those concerns were the focus of Rileyās writing, and they drove how our team engaged with and shared (or didnāt share) it. We have an obligation as an employer to treat such complaints confidentially, evaluate them seriously, and avoid retaliatory action against the person raising the concerns. These obligations exist in part to avoid creating a chilling effect where employees feel uncomfortable raising HR concerns for fear of negative consequences for themselves.
It is now clear the ways in which our approach was too limited, too focused on following a standard HR process, and insufficiently proactive in recognizing the harmful nature of the contents included with the complaints. The focus on evaluating Rileyās concerns meant multiple staff members made a significant error when they did not identify and investigate the inappropriate and excessive content included within his document. Sharing HR concerns does not require disclosing a colleagueās sexual assault. It was not until Frances first approached the Legal Team in August 2025 to express concerns about the contents of the document that we launched an investigation. CEA should have proactively initiated this investigation sooner, without requiring Frances to act first. Failing to do so placed an unfair burden on Frances to self-advocate during what was an already difficult time. I also want to recognize the ways in which poor communication from CEA staff may have contributed to an experience of feeling like an individual needing to navigate a cold bureaucracy, which could have added to the emotional difficulty of this experience and left Frances feeling uncared for rather than supported. These are real failures for which I am deeply sorry, and I want to name them clearly.
While we cannot unwind the harm that has already occurred, it is important to me that CEA learns and makes improvements to prevent similar incidents from happening again. The forward-looking recommendation from the report was to implement training (which we have begun in multiple forms), but I think it is naive to believe traditional HR trainings would address every issue. In particular, we need to create a culture where there is more organizational ownership and proactivity to prevent and address sexual harassment. Weāre laying the groundwork for some of those changes via new staffing (Riley no longer works at CEA, we have a new HR manager, and multiple additional hires are on the way). I also recognize laying groundwork means we are far from the desired end state, and that we will need to work hard to improve instead of offering quick fix solutions. The burden to act should never have been on Frances, and CEA needs to do a better job living up to its values.
Frances, Iām sorry. You deserved better from us.
For me, this comes down to trust.
FTX collapsed because of fraud. Customers lost money they had trusted the exchange to hold, and the people responsible, including Caroline, were rightly held accountable.
I also believe in second chances and the possibility of redemption. I briefly managed cGās criminal justice reform program, and I deeply believe itās a moral good to give people a path back to participating in society after theyāve done wrong.
But I also believe that trust ā especially trust from a community someone harmed ā has to be earned, not simply extended. Going from prison for financial crimes and causing harm with philanthropy to a role with real influence over finances and philanthropy on an extremely short timeline is a leap I do not believe has been earned.
Organizations that ask donors to trust them with money should hold themselves to a higher standard. A recent financial fraud conviction would disqualify someone from a finance role at CEA, regardless of any reputational considerations. I am disappointed with the decision itself, not just its effect on our work.
I saw some of the harm Caroline and her colleagues caused up close. When I took over as CEO of Effective Ventures US to lead EV through the FTX crisis, I worked with core EA institutions who incurred significant damage from the trust they had placed in Caroline and her colleagues when they had claimed to be doing good. Tens of millions of dollars and years of peopleās work were lost, as was a level of public and community trust that has taken years to even partially rebuild. One of the lessons I took from that period is that we, as a community, extended trust too easily and too fast. I worry Manifundās decision repeats that mistake.
Caroline hasnāt done the work to earn that trust back. Moreover, her willingness to take on a role she should have known would cause harm to others makes me concerned that she is not on track to earn that trust back anytime soon. And Manifund hasnāt earned the trust that it will be a responsible steward of the communityās trust on her behalf. This was a unilateral call by Austin and Caroline, and I think it traded down our collective trust.
Iām writing this message in my capacity as CEO of CEA. Itās important to remember that nobody runs EA, including CEA, and Manifund has the ability to make hiring decisions on its own. But I think itās fair for people and institutions in the community to speak up when they believe an organizationās actions are out of step with the norms and values that hold this ecosystem together. For our part, CEA will be refraining from giving Manifund a platform through our programs for the foreseeable future, such as recruiting booths at our events.
To be clear, this isnāt about writing Caroline off as a person. I believe people can change. I also hope Caroline finds good ways to use her skills. But I think it is wrong for Austin and Caroline to make a decision that affects so many of us given I donāt believe that change has been demonstrated, and I donāt believe diving into finance or philanthropy is the right way to attempt to earn the necessary trust.