it was just embracing and everyone was welcome. and you could be as weird as you wanted to be. and i wanted to be weird. i had been so obedient and conformist as a child, i really wanted to kind of push the boundaries a little bit. so i really loved it. and at the time it was filled with artists and, you know young people that's not true anymore. they can't afford to live there now. it's tech millionaires. that's it. but i loved it for so long. it's difficult. i left san francisco in 2021, so my children could attend the school and i missed what it was

though. it's not what it was and we'll get to 21 in just a sec. you took series of jobs roommates? i did no money. yeah, everybody did. that's what you do when you're young. you know, i lived with four or five other girls. i worked odd jobs. it was fun, you know. and i eventually landed in adverts as an agency in 1994 and found myself eventually on the levi's account, say, did you were you making the kind of money that a cmo or a group vice president? group president you would be making could live comfortably in san frae time i was cmo which was 2013, i was very bad at advocating for myself in terms of compensation and all of that. i was terrible at it. i remember i became the cmo somebody accidentally sent me. i don't think this is in the book like a spreadsheet with everyone is salary.

at my level, they didn't mean to send that to me and i was the lowest paid person and i was like, what? what am i doing? i'm the highest performer. but i had just always not been very good at that. it felt gr tell story in the book about meeting with h.r. and then telling you knowing increase in pay. yeah. take the good job. right. and i agreed to that but that was stupid. so at what point did you start to become known as the trouble maker at leaving? i didn't, you know, i don't think is that, you know, i hate to use that word if it's not. that's a nice way to put it. i mean, i think the real way would have been like not a troublemaker, but a q and on known as. i mean i started i was pretty outspoken right from the start of code like march 2020, i questioned the school closures. i didn't a call from anyone internally until 2020.

you know, i knew it was controversial. i knew my friends were like, what are you doing? but no one called. so i was like, okay, maybe they're not on twitter. maybe they just didn't notice i wrong. and then i got the first call in september 20, 20 from my peer was the head of corporate communications saying people are noticing don't like it so and i said, oh so your kids are in school, right? she said yeah. why were her kids in school in years? not because the private schools opened. the private schools wereds were going to private public schools. your kids still at home, still closed? yeah, mine. and more importantly the 60% of whom were low income and had no strong wife. i no parent at home to mind them. you know, my kids were luckier than most. obviously in public schools. i was concerned about all the children at that level that you were at. jennifer sey is it tempting to go the private route? i was never interested in it.

i feel like we're part the city and the community we live in and it. i think it's like raising veal and a pen when you like cordon your children off from like real neighbors i want to be part of the city we live in. we're not better than the people we around. back to levi's unbuttoned quote and this is your inner voice talking to yourself. á way you wrote this. you you can put up we care about profits through principles face and you can post about blm and lgbtq and all the other letters. but when the rubber hits the road, it's all about the benjamins, as they say, and desperate to maintain this harder right over easier, wrong. we really care ethos. you strike down any view that veers from the orthodoxy. the san francisco bubble democratic party orthodoxy because yes, you're about party

not principles. you're about appealing to the woke to sell jeans because they seem cool to you like they might buy more and spend more than some midwestern on stylish self-avowed patriot. that's the loud part. that's the that's the quiet part being said out loud. correct. i get to do that now. is it is it refreshing? is it scary to be able to say things? i, you know, write things like this? it's it's refreshing. i mean, obviously, i said what i thought on the issue of covid before, but i was restrained and i look back and i am proud of how i comported myself. and you include a lot of the tweets that you sent in the book? well, i think it's important because any reasonable person reads them now, thinks they're perfectly reasonable. i wanted to make that clear there is i would challenge anyone to challenge anything. i said. i'm nice, i'm diplomatic. i'm restrained. i am never rude. i cite data most people now who

are rational look at the things i was posting. they're like, i don't get what was wrong with that. yeah exactly. but i'm more free now to let the inside voice out, which is is freeing. it's liberating. i don't have to think what is somebody going to think? you know, i've also been called every name you can be called at this point. i'm not afraid of what they'll call me. i laugh at it now, who are members of the woke mob that you refer to? well, there's various sort of cohorts. there are young eloyees, which is a small but punitive minority that like sending emails to my boss and so there's there's a cohort of employees who called me all manner of, you know racist, bigot. q and on conspiracy theorist and attempted to, you know, struggle session thesedeas out of me ggle session yeah. it was like a struggle session. i had to do an apology tour and i was briefed before the apology tour. but this is as brand president.

yes, i was already brand president. i was told i need to do an apology tour. there's actually an email that prepared me for the apology tour that i found after i wrote the book that basically says, you need to prove you are one of us, 're one of the good guys, not one of the bad guys people think you are a racist. your q and on. they think you're a conspiracy st and an anti-vaxxer and you need to prove that you are not okay. where did the racist part come in with your tweets about covid? i'll explain that. it's very convoluted, but i can do it quickly. the idea was if you wanted the schools to ope whi disproportionate populated by black and brown children that you did not care about, black and brown children died. that was the carnival rooted rationale. where q and on fall. i don't understand that. a' not sure q9 is real to this day. so i don't know. i can't explain the anti-vaccine

part. are you ccinwhich you talk about in the book? i am. and but i was. i want to be. i did it because it was for your job? yeah. why did you not want to. i looked at my risk profile. it was very, v low. it seemed unnecessary. me. from the book. is, don't get me wrong i'm not against capitalism. far from it. i'm against the charade that is social justice. capitalism. i want to buy stuff because it's the best stuff on the market. when me over with your excellence i'll even pay more for it. i'll express my political affiliation with my vote, not my sneakers or soft drink of choice. yeah how can you walk through a crowd and identify people's

political affiliations by what they're wearing or carrying or. well, certainly if they're wearing a you know, like a rainbow swoosh. swoosh is the nike symbol rainbow. it would be their pride month. you know, t shirt. yeah i guess there's very few brands that express a cause that are aligned with the more concern of it. i'm thinking apparel right now? i can't really think of apparel ar left. that's why i have no job. are youcause of your past employment? which is none of my business. but i asked you why. yes, but i can't not work for the rest of my life. i'm not kind of fin secure. i'm in no danger of my children going hungry and i need job. and you left the of sanafter all this happened, correct? i did. i left in midst of it because in the spring of 21 schools still showed no sign of opening. i had a kindergartner who had never set foot in a classroom.

i have four children, but my kindergartner never been in a classroom. and i his first year of school disaster. i wanted him to have a good experience and have good feeling about school. so we moved to denver. our offis virtually so that my son could attend school in person. why few reasons. i a city. still, i wasn't prepared to kind of move to the burbs or the i just wasn't ready. it was close enough to san francisco. i could get there in a day or back a day, one day there and back. and i still had some in-person meetings with my team and i like in colorado, there's a bit of a libertarian. it's very blue now, but they are very welcoming to all viewpoints. i've never felt afraid to raise anything, i think, and have an open, honest conversation with my neighbors and even the governor, jared polis, he's i mean, he's called himself a

democratic. so i like that. jennifer, say, do you talk to anyone from levi's anymore? were you, as they say, shunned? i was shunned. i talked to a few people who have left since, who have reached out to me, since leaving. has anyone said sorry? no. do you think you deserve a sorry? i do, but i'm not waiting one. how is ithat you're able to write what you right here? did you not take a buyout in india? no i took no nda. i was so when i was told in january of 22 there was that i needed to leave. you need to go now. basicall you've lost the trust of the team and the employees. there's no room for you as a leader at this company. if you sign this nondisclosure agreement, we'll give you $1 million. that was the offer. i decided not to do that because i didn't wanosure agreement so i

could write this book not for the money. it's not that much money, but because i thought it was so important to tell the story of censorship the fact is i relate it to my story in particular if we had been able collectively to an open and honest conversation about kids in schools and lockdowns, we would have reached very different decisions rather having an open conversation. people like me were demonized andvery dangerous. and is that. the fact that you were demonized and deplatformed rather than having an open, honest discussion, regardless of what the outcome of discussion might have been? that's the thing that drives you in a sense. now, yes, in this particular instance, i think if there had been a suicide city wide conversation with doctors and, you know, epidemiologists and not just sort of government led, talking points because there were people renowned doctors

pushing back, they were censored. but if we were permitted to have a answer, a right answer. and our children and california wouldn't have been out of school for close to 19 months. that caused lot of harm. and but even if we didn't reach that answer, we still need to have those on matters of public concern. you were demonized as well for what your husband, daniel, had to say. is that correct. yeah, so a little misogynistic? that's a good questio i think. i mean, that's all conjecture but i don't think anybody was asking, you know, the ceo what his wife thought. but then again, his wife wasn't probably tweeting a lot like my husband was. so but nobody was all that concerned about it. but he was not in he was not he was not in favor. and he was making that known on social media. yes. he was very vocal. he was going to anti-lockdown rallies. i kept my two kids because i thought that that was a bridge. you know people everybody could

get behind. we don't want to harm more about a range of issues pertaining covid. any other more aggressive and challenging tone than i do. but you know what? he doesn't work there. who cares? but apparently if you have a relative that has a viewpoint the company doesn't like, then you don't get to work thereore. and i just hope everybody thinks, about how dangerous this is what my dad is a republican and he's a trump voter. he's not. but what if he was? does that mean i can't have a job at levi's is that the world we want to live in? did you know any conservative republicans voted for donald levi's? now not part of the company? no, iilll the the headquarters are in san francisco, so definitely not. it was a matter of like, did you vote for the mainstream candidate or the further like, were you a bernie or a biden that was all in bounds and acceptable. there no republicans but we had office texas we had

distribution centers, red states in the middle of the country am very certain that there were lots of folks in those locales that did vote or vote. trump i am very certain they did not feel comfortable saying that or making that known their friends and colleagues back to levi's unbutton yet as i write this, i'm still puzzling over where i think the lines should drawn. when is it for corporations to move beyond employees to taking overtly political stands beyond? the walls of the company still that line is it's pretty clear when we, along with justice about every la crossed it woke capitalism. summer of 2020. what are we talking about? we're talking about the blm rallies and they accelerate in sort of denunciation of privilege and vowing to fight hire, you know, heads of deep divisions

hundreds of people elevate our power and influence in these companies. i have no issue with inclusion. this is not inclusion. if it were inclusive why does it matter what i say and advocate for out of work, which, by the way, helps the people they say they care about the the student population in san francisco public schools is desperate. black and brown. so it all just, you know, so many stories of people being canceled and fired in the summer of 2020 for some errant comment from ten years prior. that is somehow in today's context perceived as not anti racist enough. there was a witch hunt going on. well, speaking of that, do you thyo if you hadn't been in gymnastics in that fire, well, 12, 15 years and had that pressure on you? it's a good question. i mean, i don't think having

competed in gymnastics withstood is sufficient because, look, all my peers, you know, i think i will say this. so when i wrote my first book about gymnastics, there was a ton of blowback there, albeit in a narrower community in the sports community, the olympic movement. i was really vilified and dragged across the internet and ultimately was redeemed. it took ten years, but i was everybody came around and said john was right. that i held close to me. you know, i felt clear eyed about what i was saying and what the data i was logical and rational and i thought people are going to catch up their emotional right now but their catch up i believe that's true still it just i did ni lost my job before that happened throughout levi's unbuttoned you you bring up what you see is hypocritical by elite executives and the rest yeah especially when it comes to schools yeah i mean the crazy

part is i don't know how schools and covert and locked it shouldn't have been political we should have been concerned and about the children it became a sort of wokedemocratic party platform i think in our zeal to in their zeal to get trump out of office, you know, i think that is what started it. and then it just ether and even though biden won, it kept going, going and going. and the harms became so great suncor fallacy. we couldn't admit that it was so bad. so we're going to stand by these atrocious policies. i think. but yeah so there was hypocrisy on the part of the senior executives who were all do you know, going to their vacation homes and doing whatever they wanted and claiming all in this together which was not true. their kids were in private school or pods and they're flying to europe, hawaii. but you had the the workers

hours that wasn't the case for was like a frenzy in there it was so uniform people believed. and i think by doing bully people believe they were fighting s what this was all about, right? you could stay home and do nothing. feel like the most virtuous person in the world who doesn't want to feel virtuous for doing nothing. and you talk about keyboard warriors, which i used, but i would push back on that. but what is a keyboard warrior and what's the danger of a person like that? the keyboard warrior m online people who just like try to cancel people online, you know, think they're doing good activist oriented because they're, you know tweeting lot and try to take good people down. i get accused of it beknow guess ultimately my active twitter is at least part of my demise. but i as i said, i was doing all these other things. i was attending everol

board meeting. i worked on the school board recall in san francisco, which successful i led rallies. so i was a real life warrior to do you still tweet from at jennifer sey? i do and what do you tweet covered. i treat a tweet i well i don't really he any rules for myself anymore. so i get to tweet about whatever i want. i definitely talk a lot about the impact to children. i don't want anyone to forget aboutin. our kids are suffering. this has impacted a generation of children. i tweet about issues you know censorship, other various illiberal isms are happening right now in country. i don't know anything that interests me in the news with the benefit of a little bit of hindsight and time, would you change anything you did during this period? no no, i think i did the right

thing and i was true to mysel so i you know i try to be grateful that i have the to say anything ianyone can do. i'm not hurt by the names. they call me now. so i don't regret any of it. yeah. who's chris and what happened? chris is? my brother. we used to be close, so i thought we did not agree on code and policy he was a fervent lock down. i was a pretty passionate anti-lockdown owner in the beginning, like the first year we talked about our disagreement. but it became too fraught and we haven't spoken several years two or three years at this point. he, hisnds my views to be dangerously critical doctors. he position that not doctor took individually but

that doctors in public health took collectively to be dangerous and a violation of our civil liberties. levi's unbuttoned. jennifer se writes i unlike some have no real issue with rich people. that's capitalism. some people, very few, will make a lot of money. what i do have an issue with is rich masquerading as social warriors and fierce employee advocates. while they are laying off 15% of their workforce at the same time as they are adding tens of of dollars to their bank accounts. they can't have it both ways. yeah. i don't like hypocrites. people call me a grifter, don't know how they get that, but i'm word. there's no grift in what i'm doing. what's. what's the grift part? i'm trying to. i don't know. it's a stupid thing people say online. they somehow think getting like money for taking these stances that i could not authentically

believe in the things saying, of course, i believe in them."r