On Thursday, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick met with a group of more than 100 female engineers to address the sexual harassment allegations at the company.
The meeting came days after former employee Susan Fowler detailed the sexual harassment and overall toxic culture that she says she experienced while working at the ride-hailing company.
BuzzFeed obtained a recording from a portion of the internal meeting and made the audio available on SoundCloud. In the four-minute-long clip, you hear a woman asking Kalanick to “address the elephant in the room” about “the systemic problem” of sexism in the tech industry.
“We have the data, we have the anecdotes, we have it happening in our own backyard,” she says. “When are we going to get together and say there’s a systemic problem here and stop using hypotheticals?”
Kalanick addresses the question by saying he knows there are people in the meeting who have “experienced things that are incredibly unjust.” He adds that he empathizes, and he wants to “get at the people who are making this place a bad place.”
During the meeting, an emotional Kalanick references Fowler, saying he believes the issue is bigger than just one instance and that he’s committed to rooting out the problem at Uber. “It’s a little emotional for me, and I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s emotional for some of you too,” he says.
Uber declined to comment on the recording.
