Her manager cited a PTO cap that turned out to be a prenatal leave screenshot
TIAA created a governance program to safeguard the retirement products it manages for millions of Americans. Two Black women designed and ran it. According to a federal lawsuit filed September 24, 2026, both were pushed out within four months - and the work kept going without them.
The complaint, lodged in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges TIAA terminated the worker who operated the program under a rationale its own internal communications contradicted the very next day.
The worker joined TIAA in August 2023 after two years at J.P. Morgan, according to the filing. She was recruited by a colleague - a Black female Managing Director hired in 2022 to create the company's New Business Initiative Assessment program, known internally as NBIA. Together, the two-person team developed the entire framework: an enterprise-wide governance and control system designed to ensure regulatory compliance and operational readiness for all new and materially modified products offered to TIAA's retirement and wealth management clients.
The program was no back-office exercise. According to the complaint, TIAA's executive committee approved it, internal audit cleared it in the first quarter of 2025, and the company formally submitted it to the New York Department of Financial Services as a "key mitigant" for product safety and soundness risk. The pipeline grew from 22 initiatives in 2022 to 57 by mid-2025, the filing states, supporting business lines projected to bring in over $25 billion in additional assets.
Over 31 months, the worker received no documented performance criticism of any kind, according to the filing. No improvement plan. No discipline. No warning.
Then her colleague went on approved medical leave in late July 2025.
The complaint alleges that a senior manager - who the filing says had "no knowledge of the area" - immediately tried to pressure the worker into gutting the program without the colleague's knowledge. On the first night of the leave, he emailed her: "we will need your leadership to determine, practically speaking, which activities to curtail or eliminate," according to the filing. The worker refused, citing the program's regulatory importance, and added her colleague to the email chain so she would see it on her return.
Within weeks, a covering manager was installed while the worker was on approved leave. According to the complaint, this manager - who is not Black - launched what the filing describes as "a sustained campaign" to disparage the NBIA program as "confusing" and "duplicative." The complaint alleges the covering manager badgered the worker in meetings, excluded her from others, portrayed her as dishonest in writing before senior colleagues, and pressured her to alter approved committee minutes that had been reviewed by TIAA's legal department.
The worker refused to change the minutes.
The complaint alleges the worker raised concerns to TIAA's HR business partner on multiple occasions between August and September 2025. According to the filing, HR took no corrective action. Instead, the complaint states, the HRBP sent the worker a lengthy written reprimand for raising those concerns and instructed her to trust in the covering manager's "positive intent."
The worker's response, according to the filing, was pointed: she asked what outlets were available to speak up "if HR no longer feels able to listen."
According to the complaint, the HRBP dismissed her concerns entirely, writing that senior leaders were being asked to "break bureaucracy" by streamlining processes and driving efficiencies.
The colleague returned from leave in October 2025. One month later, on November 17, 2025, she was terminated, the filing states. The publicly stated rationale was eliminating "duplicative" processes - offered, the complaint alleges, without documentary support and contradicting the program's own institutional history: a program TIAA had created to fill a governance gap, approved by its own executive committee, submitted to regulators, and cleared by internal audit only months earlier.
The worker learned of the termination by phone while she was overseas on approved leave, according to the complaint. The covering manager told her to stop communicating with the terminated colleague about anything TIAA-related - even though the colleague's official employment did not end until January 2, 2026, the filing states.
From there, the complaint alleges the treatment intensified.
The covering manager demanded a list of every stakeholder meeting the worker held, a demand the complaint alleges was not made of any similarly situated employee. In early December, the covering manager verbally requested a report needed for a December 10 meeting, according to the filing. The worker delivered it on December 9. The covering manager reprimanded her in writing for not having it by December 8 - a deadline the complaint states was never communicated and fell during a period of approved leave.
Then came the vacation cap.
In January 2026, the covering manager informed the worker for the first time that she should "baseline" at approximately 20 days of annual vacation, the complaint states. That cap did not exist. According to the filing, the worker's offer at hire included unlimited paid time off under TIAA's written "Responsible Time Off" policy, which contained no maximum. When the worker asked for the policy basis, the covering manager sent a screenshot showing a 20-hour New York Paid Prenatal Leave entitlement - a provision the filing describes as bearing no relationship to the worker's circumstances and concerning hours rather than days.
In the same exchange, the complaint states, the covering manager attached a report of the worker's complete time-off history going back to 2024, before her management even began, signaling that past use of an unlimited benefit was now under retroactive scrutiny.
Then came the performance review.
In January 2026 - weeks before the only negative review of her tenure - the covering manager's own chief of staff sent the worker formal written recognition. According to the complaint, he praised "the clarity and depth of her presentation as truly outstanding" and described her "leadership and subject matter expertise as invaluable assets."
On January 29, 2026, the covering manager delivered the year-end review over video call, the complaint states. She read the colleague's overwhelmingly positive feedback aloud, then mentioned she had added her own written comments and told the worker to read them after the call. The negative portion was based on approximately three weeks of actual observation, according to the filing. The electronic sign-off deadline was the next day. The worker submitted a written rebuttal. When she asked for examples to support the claims, the covering manager could not provide any, according to the complaint.
On February 3, 2026, the worker attended a company-sponsored, invitation-only Black History Month event at NASDAQ organized by a TIAA business resource group, the filing states. While she was at the event, a "time sensitive" report was demanded with a same-day deadline. The covering manager then reprimanded the worker in writing - copying a colleague - and instructed her to report her whereabouts when away from her desk, according to the complaint.
On March 26, 2026, TIAA told the worker her role was being eliminated. The rationale: NBIA processes would be "integrated" into strategic governance functions. The next day, according to the filing, the covering manager sent an email to a broad internal audience instructing staff to continue performing the same NBIA work, using the same process and tools. She asked recipients who had previously met with the worker to redirect their questions to another employee - one the complaint describes as having no working knowledge of the NBIA program.
Also on that final working day, the complaint states, the worker received a request through the NBIA management tool to reactivate an initiative the covering manager had previously ordered placed in the "dead folder." The filing describes this as an attempt to avoid admitting the worker had been right to keep it in the pipeline.
At termination, the worker's base salary was $147,900, according to the complaint. She had also received $43,500 in incentive compensation the previous month.
The lawsuit brings claims of race and sex discrimination under federal, state, and city law, along with claims of retaliation for raising discrimination complaints and for whistleblowing. The worker alleges she was punished for refusing to dismantle a regulatory control program and for flagging concerns about how she was being treated. She seeks compensatory and punitive damages, back and front pay, and attorneys' fees.
Her former colleague has filed a separate action against TIAA in the same court, the complaint states.
For HR leaders, the complaint puts the internal complaint-handling process itself under a microscope. The allegation that an HRBP reprimanded an employee for raising discrimination concerns - rather than investigating them - is the kind of fact pattern that keeps employment lawyers awake at night and HR directors reviewing their own escalation protocols.
The allegations in this complaint have not been tested, and no court has made any findings or rulings on the claims.
