Time’s Up Foundation

The foundation operates the Time’s Up legal defense fund, which provides free consultations and legal representation to women suing their employers for sexual harassment, and the Time’s Up Impact Lab, which produces and funds research into the alleged gender-based wage gap in the United States.²

The Time’s Up Foundation has also sponsored several left-leaning public activism and media campaigns including the Time’s Up, Pay Up campaign which partnered with the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team in 2019 to demand that female players receive equal pay commensurate with players on the U.S. men’s soccer team.³

Discrediting Victims of Sexual Harassment by Andrew Cuomo

In August 2021, it was reported that Time’s Up co-founders Robbie Kaplan and Tina Tchen had aided staffers of disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in suppressing credible allegations of sexual assault and harassment and silencing alleged victims.¹ Reports from the New York Attorney General’s investigation stated that both Kaplan and Tchen had been consulted by Cuomo’s staffers to help write an op-ed, which was ultimately never published, discrediting Cuomo’s first accuser, Lindsey Boylan. After reading the op-ed, “[Kaplan and Tchen] allegedly suggested that, without the statements about Ms. Boylan’s interactions with male colleagues, the letter was fine.”¹

After the New York Attorney General’s investigation became public, the Time’s Up Foundation issued a statement calling on Governor Cuomo to resign. The statement made no mention of Kaplan and Tchen’s alleged role in the attempted smear campaign against Lindsey Boylan.¹

On August 9, 2021, Robbie Kaplan resigned as chairwoman of the Time’s Up Foundation. ⁴ In her resignation letter Kaplan wrote, “Unfortunately, recent events have made it clear that even our apparent allies in the fight to advance women can turn out to be abusers.” Kaplan refused to comment to the New York Times on her involvement with suppressing allegations against Cuomo. ⁴ Melissa DeRosa, a former Governor’s aide to who assisted in the cover-up of the allegations against Cuomo, testified in the New York Attorney General’s inquiry that Kaplan was her lawyer. ⁴ Kaplan’s resignation led to criticism of the Time’s Up Foundation for betraying its mission, and one article penned by sexual harassment victims on Medium claimed that Time’s Up was “failing all survivors.” ⁵

The day that the report the New York Attorney General’s report became public, Tina Tchen published a tweet denying that she had helped Governor Cuomo to discredit his accusers in any way. “I had a phone call with Robbie Kaplan about a letter she said was being sent by [Cuomo’s] staffers during which I gave the same advice I give to everyone else: No survivor should be attacked and the truth should be told,” Tchen wrote.⁶

On August 26, 2021, the Washington Post reported that newly obtained text messages proved Tchen was much more involved than she initially claimed to be. The text messages reportedly showed that Tchen told her colleagues to “stand down” from issuing a statement in support of Lindsey Boylan in the days following Boylan’s accusations against Cuomo. ⁷ Tchen was joined in her opposition to issuing a statement by Hillary Rosen, fellow Time’s Up board member and managing director at SKD Knickerbocker, who wrote that she was concerned that issuing a statement would give Fox News “a headline to run all day” that would negatively impact Cuomo. The same day, Tchen announced her resignation as president of Times Up. ⁸