On behalf of Trusaic, I am incredibly excited to announce our partnership with U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) World Cup champion, gender and race/ethnicity equality advocate, and LGBTQ+ ally, Megan Rapinoe.
Recognizing Megan’s success
In addition to winning the World Cup twice and receiving an Olympic gold medal, Megan has paved the way for pay equity. Most recently, she led the USWNT to a triumphant victory for pay equity for women soccer players. The case dates back to 2016 when Megan and four teammates filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regarding gender pay discrimination.
Five years later and through various legal challenges, the team reached a historic agreement with the U.S. Soccer Federation at $22 million, eliminating pay discrimination in women’s soccer and creating a seismic shift for working women around the world.
Beyond the monetary settlement for USWNT, the lawsuit ensures that moving forward women soccer players be paid the same as men for athletic performance, including during tournaments like the World Cup.
Following the court case victory, Megan said, “I just think it’s so difficult sometimes to talk about and to articulate the kind of discrimination, abuse, inequity, and disrespect that so many women feel so often in their job… And I think we were able to start to put a voice to that, put a face to it, put talking points to it and put a sort of movement behind it.”
While Megan’s proclamation speaks to gender discrimination in the workplace, it is applicable to anyone who’s ever been marginalized, including me. Having immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea when I was a boy, I experienced countless acts of discrimination. Growing up during the ‘70s and ‘80s was a difficult time in Los Angeles, as there was significant backlash against Asians due to a significant increase in Asian immigration and automobile imports.
Driving pay equity as a strategic initiative
My early interactions with discrimination inspired me to do the work that Trusaic does today. I believe Megan’s and my very personal relationships with injustice have positioned us to tackle some of the world’s oldest social issues.
Pay equity, diversity, and inclusion are the future of the workplace and together, it is our goal to ensure pay equity for every working person.
Our pay equity auditing, diversity, and inclusion software, PayParity gives organizations the tools they need to achieve a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. The professional services and software solution conducts a pay equity audit across an organization’s workforce at the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, age, and disability – providing employers with an actionable path forward for remediating any identified pay disparities. Ultimately, PayParity helps organizations reach true workplace equality.
Megan is excited to take her activism to the next level with PayParity. She says, “The exciting part of my partnership with Trusaic is that we have a solution that allows organizations to identify their gaps, examine their pay practices, and take concrete steps now – today – to make real, actionable, and lasting change.”
Together, we will work to help organizations large and small achieve gender and racial wage equality. We challenge employers to rise to the occasion to close the pay gap this decade, instead of the World Economic Forum’s global prediction of 136 years.
What our new partnership means
At Trusaic, our success is about treating people the way they want to be treated and being part of something greater than ourselves. Our future will be filled with more technology, software, and algorithms. But, human success is not based on technology, algorithms, and software. It is based on our values, common goals, and shared vision for compassion. The next revolution is freedom. Humanity will be free once we treat each other as equals.
As a part of our partnership, Megan will be joining Trusaic’s “E-suite” where she will serve as our Chief Equality Officer. The “E-suite,” is a first-of-its-kind reimagining of the C-suite that emphasizes the leadership commitment to equity, equality, and equal pay.
Acting as Chief Equality Officer, Megan will facilitate and promote the work we do in solving pay inequity at the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, age, disability, and sexual orientation.
While our professional union is new, it’s one that made sense for our company and has been years in the making. Megan and I crossed paths at the WorldatWork Pay Equity Symposium in 2019, just as strides to promote gender and race/ethnicity pay equity were beginning to take a stronger foothold in state legislatures across the U.S.
Much has happened since our first meeting four years ago, and the timing of our formal partnership couldn’t be better. Our shared goal is to ensure “pay equity for everyone” and with each other’s help, we are certain we can achieve that.
To learn more about our partnership with Megan, visit our partnership page below: