Eight years, five promotions, four awards — then a 30-minute interview and the door
A Black senior manager at Charles Schwab says she was fired after pushing back on a directive aimed at a breastfeeding employee.
Dr. Shika L. Mahdavi spent nearly eight years inside Schwab Charitable, climbing through five promotions, collecting four Charitable Excellence Awards and a place in the firm's Aspiring Leadership Program. She earned somewhere between $147,000 and $150,000 a year, says she had no formal discipline on her record and, by her own account, was in the middle of running performance reviews when the call came on August 11, 2025. The reason given, she says, was a "policy violation" that no one would explain.
That, in essence, is the story laid out in a lawsuit she filed on May 22, 2026 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Mahdavi v. Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., No. 4:26-cv-00555. She is pursuing claims of race and color discrimination and retaliation under federal law.
The trigger, according to her filing, came in early 2025. A subordinate had returned from maternity leave and was attending virtual and hybrid meetings while caring for her infant. At an offsite, Mahdavi says, a Schwab Managing Director complained about it. The filing recounts him saying he had "never seen someone have their baby on camera during meetings and then leave early to breastfeed," and telling Mahdavi and another manager to "address it."
Mahdavi says she read that directive as something she could not carry out in good conscience. She says she did not personally approach the employee about breastfeeding or childcare. Instead, she messaged her co-manager: "Hey Kim, I was hoping you could step in to have a quick conversation with Jas for me. I honestly don't feel like I have the capacity to handle it well right now, and I worry I'll say it the wrong way." A written warning later issued to the employee, the filing says, was reviewed and revised by an HR representative and addressed performance, attendance and insubordination only — not breastfeeding or the baby on camera.
What followed, Mahdavi alleges, looked less like fact-finding and more like a foregone conclusion. She says she got a single thirty-minute interview, was never told the precise allegations against her, and was never allowed to submit evidence or name witnesses. Several colleagues with direct knowledge, she claims, were never contacted. According to the filing, the HR business partner running the inquiry acknowledged a conflict of interest but stayed on the case anyway. A senior employee relations leader who promised a "full investigation" allegedly signed off on the termination without ever speaking to her.
For HR leaders, the allegations land on familiar terrain: how managers should respond when a senior executive issues an instruction that brushes up against protected activity, how investigators handle conflicts and witness access, and how much weight HR-approved discipline really carries once the winds shift. Mahdavi also claims that similarly situated non-Black managers got years of coaching for comparable conduct, while she was walked out the same day as another manager who had raised similar concerns.
The allegations have not been tested in court. Schwab has not yet filed a response, and no judge has ruled on any of the claims.
