Apple CEO Tim Cook, left, with Jay Blahnik, Apple's vice president for fitness technologies, in Cupertino, California, on September 12, 2017. Photo / Jim Wilson, The New York Times
Workers say the executive was volatile and retaliated when they cooperated with an investigation. Apple denies the claims.
Jay Blahnik was a fitness superstar with a book and nearly two decades of work with Nike before he was hired in 2013 to work on the Apple Watch. He became known inside Apple as the creator of the watch’s signature fitness feature: three circular bands that people could complete through the day by exercising, standing and burning calories. Marketed with the tagline “Close Your Rings”, the concept helped galvanise sales of Apple’s first breakout product after Steve Jobs’ death.
But along the way, Blahnik created a toxic work environment, said nine current and former employees who worked with or for Blahnik and spoke about personnel issues on the condition of anonymity. They said Blahnik, 57, who leads a roughly 100-person division as vice president for fitness technologies, could be verbally abusive, manipulative and inappropriate. His behaviour contributed to decisions by more than 10 workers to seek extended mental health or medical leaves of absence since 2022, about 10% of the team, these people said.
When confronted with Blahnik’s behaviour, Apple moved to protect him after an internal investigation. The company settled one complaint alleging sexual harassment by Blahnik and is fighting a lawsuit by an employee, Mandana Mofidi, who said he had bullied her. Blahnik stayed in his job after company officials said their investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing, according to interviews and Mofidi’s lawsuit, which she filed against Blahnik and Apple last year in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The tension inside Blahnik’s division speaks to workplace dysfunction at the heart of one of Apple’s signature health initiatives. These employees said the company was more willing to protect a star executive than address the concerns of rank-and-file workers.
“At the end of the day, we don’t matter,” said Kayla Desautels, who was the team’s social media coordinator before departing last year after a mental health leave. She said she had “never worked anywhere more toxic”.
Lance Lin, an Apple spokesperson, said the company took “all concerns seriously” and was “deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace”. He said Apple thoroughly investigated workplace issues but that it did not discuss matters involving individual employees, in the interest of respecting their privacy.
“We strongly disagree with the premise of this story, and there are many inaccurate claims and mischaracterisations,” said Lin, who declined to provide any specific examples of the inaccuracies when asked to discuss reporting from The New York Times. He added, “We will continue to share the facts through the legal process.”
In a legal filing, Apple denied that there had been “harassment, discrimination, retaliation or any other harm”. It said Mofidi had “received constructive feedback and coaching from her supervisors in response to a well-documented history of unresolved performance issues”.
Blahnik did not respond to requests for comment.
Around 2017, Apple asked Blahnik to develop a subscription service called Apple Fitness+ with workout videos that would cost $9.99 a month. It was launched in 2020 and today offers videos of 12 types of workouts, including dance, Pilates and kickboxing. Apple has also added audio workouts to inspire people to exercise, including “Time to Walk” and “Time to Run”.
Although Blahnik brought deep experience to the job, he often made unprofessional comments, the nine current and former employees said.
During a meeting in 2021 to discuss a fitness feature on Olympic skier Ted Ligety, Blahnik joked with colleagues about sleeping with the skier, two people who attended the meeting said. Mofidi, who wasn’t involved in that project, said members of the team had told her later that Blahnik suggested that a member of the team had gotten Ligety to do the feature by offering the skier a neck massage. He also spoke about the rear ends and breasts of trainers who were filming workouts, some of the other people who worked on the team said.
On another occasion, Blahnik said in front of several employees that the wife of a Fitness+ manager must have had an affair with another man because the manager’s son had a different hair colour, Mofidi and three other former employees said. Blahnik used a vulgar word in making the remark, they said.
Blahnik would leer at the group’s creative director, Wil Tidman, and compliment the way Tidman dressed, two former employees said. During a work video call with staff, he joked that Tidman was having an affair with a male producer, they said.
One summer night in 2022, Blahnik sent Tidman a text message that Tidman considered inappropriate and unsettling, two people familiar with the message said.
After the text message, Tidman left work on a medical leave, Mofidi’s lawsuit said. Tidman hired a lawyer and raised the allegation of harassment with Apple. He didn’t file a lawsuit but entered mediation with the company and reached a settlement, the two people familiar with the message said. A lawyer representing Tidman did not respond to requests for comment.
Mofidi, who had overseen podcasts for the news sites Deadspin and Jezebel, joined Apple in 2021 to help lead its audio efforts. Blahnik praised her early work, saying in a review that her first year had been “marked by significant growth and achievement”, according to her lawsuit.
During that review, Mofidi raised concerns that she had received a smaller pay increase than her male colleagues, including a direct report, her lawsuit said.
The next workday, Apple’s human resources department asked Mofidi to speak to investigators who were trying to determine whether Blahnik had harassed Tidman, her lawsuit said.
Mofidi asked to excuse herself from the inquiry. “I was aware of his behaviour, his vindictiveness,” she said in an interview. “I was nervous.” But the investigator said in an email that “participation is not voluntary”, the lawsuit said.
Two days after she heard from employee relations, Mofidi and her team met with Blahnik about the “Time to Walk” workout program, the lawsuit said. When the discussion turned to a guest’s failure to settle on music choices in time for an episode, Blahnik exploded and began yelling at Mofidi.
Kimberly Brooks, a freelancer on the call, told Blahnik that he didn’t need to yell and encouraged him to speak respectfully, the lawsuit said.
The behaviour “kicks off this whole campaign that ensues for months”, Mofidi, 41, said.
One of Blahnik’s lieutenants started criticising Mofidi’s work. In emails, the lieutenant said she was trying to correct poor performance, the lawsuit said. But Mofidi thought the emails were an effort to create a record and fire her.
“The whole experience was incredibly isolating, humiliating — honestly, scary,” Mofidi said. Her lawyers said it is unlawful to retaliate against employees who speak to human resources about an employment complaint.
Two colleagues, Chris Neil and Nathan Olivarez-Giles, had similar experiences after speaking about Tidman’s harassment claim, said three former employees who learned about those experiences. Neil and Olivarez-Giles took mental health breaks before leaving the company, these people said.
In early April 2023, Mofidi said, she was given a choice: She could take a buyout or go on a performance improvement plan, her lawsuit said.
The next day, Mofidi told human resources that she had been targeted because of the sexual harassment review and her concerns about unequal pay. “I feel a lot of pressure to decide my next move and it’s just been thrown at me today,” she wrote in an email, according to her lawsuit. “I don’t understand why.”
Human resources opened an investigation and assured Mofidi that she would not be harassed further, her lawsuit said. But Mofidi said the retaliation had continued.
“The idea was to just bully or intimidate me out,” she said in an interview.
Mofidi received a medical leave after Apple Wellness, the company’s health service for employees, found she was experiencing anxiety and depression, her lawsuit said. While she was on leave, employee relations contacted her to say it had spoken with more than 20 other employees but could not confirm that Blahnik had retaliated, the lawsuit said. The employee relations officials acknowledged that Mofidi had borne the “brunt of a lot of the harshness that Jay exhibited” and said the company should address his behaviour, her lawsuit said.
When her leave ended, Mofidi asked to move to another division at Apple so she could avoid the “same toxic environment”, her lawsuit said. Her request was denied, leading her to resign.
A trial date for Mofidi’s lawsuit is set for 2027.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Tripp Mickle
Photographs by: Jim Wilson, Preston Gannaway and Hiroko Masuike
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