She says she built a $3.5M book and trained the team — then got hit with "low utilization"
A former managing director at BDO USA says the firm let her train the men who got promoted ahead of her, then fired her after two decades.
That, in essence, is the story Serena Wong tells in a lawsuit filed April 24, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The case, captioned Wong v. BDO USA, P.C., et al., No. 1:26-cv-03393, names the accounting and advisory firm along with three of its partners — Tara Leberman, Binita Pradhan, and Mark Lundin — and lays out claims under Title VII, New York's state and city human rights laws, the state's equal pay statute, and the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.
For HR professionals, the filing reads like a tour through the friction points that tend to surface in long-tenure promotion disputes: leadership-development access, maternity leave administration, utilization metrics, and the unwritten rules of who gets included after hours.
Wong joined BDO in 2004 from the New York City Comptroller's Office and worked her way up to managing director by 2022. Along the way, according to the filing, she built a $3.5 million book of business, led a team of more than 40 people across the U.S. and abroad, and earned a stack of credentials including CISA, CISM, CRISC, and HITRUST CCSFP. She says her work helped two supervisors make partner. She did not.
The lawsuit alleges Wong was repeatedly told she was next in line for the firm's Business Leadership Institute — a 12-to-18-month program the filing describes as offering personal coaches, mentoring, and networking aimed at moving senior managers into the partnership — only to be passed over year after year with shifting explanations. Meanwhile, she says, several younger male colleagues hired after her were promoted to managing director in two to four years. Her own climb from experienced manager to managing director, she says, took eight.
The maternity leave allegations are likely to draw HR readers' attention. Wong says she was pressured during her 2007 and 2009 leaves to take client calls and work hours she was told not to bill — a practice she alleges resurfaced years later as a "low utilization" mark against her. According to the filing, a supervisor repeatedly described the firm's 13-week maternity policy as "excessive."
Wong also describes what she calls a "White fraternity/sorority" drinking culture around conferences and partner happy hours that, she says, left her on the outside as an Asian mother who does not drink. Her childcare schedule, the filing alleges, was treated as a reason to keep her out of meetings that mattered.
She was terminated on October 1, 2024. Her equal pay and FMLA claims tie that decision and her compensation history to her sex, race, and use of protected leave.
The allegations have not been tested in court, the defendants have not yet responded, and no court has ruled. BDO, Leberman, Pradhan, and Lundin have not publicly commented on the lawsuit.
