Google Lawsuit, Kristen Wiig, Sheryl Sandberg: Broadsheet

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Google gets hit with another lawsuit, doctors start to take women’s pain seriously, and pension funds take up the fight against sexual harassment. Have a delightful weekend.

EVERYONE'S TALKING

• Black is the new black. Refinery29 has put together a most excellent package of 20 must-know black women, including actors, athletes, artists and wellness experts. While I encourage you to read the package in its entirety, readers of this newsletter may be particularly interested in the interviews with:

Erica Joy Baker: Remember the doc of employee salaries that spread throughout Google like wildfire? Baker is the woman behind it. Since working at Google as a field tech-turned engineer, she did a stint at Slack and is now a senior engineering manager at Patreon.
Janaye Ingram: The director of national partnerships at Airbnb also served as secretary and a logistical coordinator for the Women’s March. Michelle Obama once referred to Ingram as “an impressive leader who plays an important role in our progress toward the mountaintop.”
Tricia Clarke-Stone: The media maven helped Russell Simmons's Global Grind convince brand advertisers that a hip-hop-focused media publishing platform was a worthwhile investment. In just two years, Clarke-Stone led the company to profitability. She then co-founded Narrative, which she sold to Hollywood producer Will Packer; she has joined Will Packer Media as head of brand studio.

As the R29 editors—who intentionally did not published this package during Black History Month—note, these are not just women who are having a "moment." They write: "This is us, and this will always be us. We’re not going anywhere." Refinery29

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

• Pension funds play hardball. In a report released on Thursday, the Council of Institutional Investors, a group of 130 pension funds with more than $3.5 trillion in assets, urged corporate directors to do a better job of fighting sexual harassment. Recommendations included "recouping executive pay from alleged harassers, encouraging staffers to divulge sexual misconduct to the board, ensuring the board learns about every settlement of a harassment case and revising rules for office romances." Wall Street Journal

• Cracking the celluloid ceiling. Each year, women in Hollywood make history, breaking the celluloid ceiling one crack at a time. The 90th Academy Awards are no different: Rachel Morrison is poised to become the first to win an Oscar for cinematography, Greta Gerwig may get a historic win for directing (only one woman before her has). Here are the trailblazers to look out for on Sunday night: Fortune

• Green Tea Party. The NYT profiles Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party organizer, fervent Trump supporter and...environmentalist? As puzzling as the combination may sound, she contends that "embracing clean energy affirms the populist beliefs the Tea Party espouses" and "monopoly control of utilities over energy supplies stands in contrast to the free market." Dooley has formed a group called the Green Tea Coalition to rally more conservatives around environmental issues. New York Times

• Nerf guns? Really? Loretta Lee, a software engineer who worked for the Silicon Valley giant from 2008 until 2016, filed suit last month against Google for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and wrongful termination. Lee alleges that she was subject to constant “lewd comments, pranks and even physical violence,” claiming that male co-workers spiked her drinks, slapped her while intoxicated during a holiday party, and shot at her with nerf guns. Fortune

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Hilton Appoints Noelle Eder as Chief Information and Digital Officer. Linda Zukauckas has been appointed EVP and Deputy CFO of American Express's Business CFO Group.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Serious as a heart attack. A (male) doctor has finally made official something that most women know: Menstrual cramps, or Dysmenorrhea, can be as painful as having a heart attack. Research has long shown that doctors generally take women's pain less seriously than men's, so it's heartening to see the medical community come to its senses. Elle

• Lalaland's Babe Ruth. The WSJ crunched the numbers and found that Meryl Streep is so revered by her peers that merely starring in a movie makes her more likely than not to earn a best actress Oscar nomination. This year’s Academy Award for her role in The Post brings Streep’s Oscar batting average to .607 (meaning she's been Oscar-nominated for more than 60% of the qualifying roles she's been in). Wall Street Journal

• Dreaming big. Glossier founder Emily Weiss says she's set on making the makeup brand as big a company as possible—and didn't rule out the possibility of going public. “If an IPO is the best way for us to get there, then we’ll do that,” she tells WWD. Glossier is currently valued at about $390 million (compare that to L’Oréal, Coty, or Estée Lauder, which have at least $9 billion in annual sales). New York Magazine

• Wu woos parents. Susan Wu, an advisor to Twitter, Reddit and Stripe and one of the “most influential women in technology," thinks she can disrupt education. Her model for teaching children, called Luminaria, promises to prepare kids "to become the architects of—rather than mere participants in—a future world" and aims to "balance hard S.T.E.M. subjects, like computer programing, with soft skills like emotional intelligence and teamwork that are increasingly sought by employers." The first school, Lumineer Academy, opened in Melbourne in January. New York Times

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