Maren Costa

Maren Costa is an American user experience designer and environmentalist. She is known for co-founding Amazon Employees For Climate Justice and for being illegally terminated by her former employer, Amazon. She is a principal designer at Microsoft.

Maren Costa
OccupationUser experience designer
EmployerMicrosoft
Known forEnvironmental activism
Notable workAmazon Employees For Climate Justice

Education

Costa has Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Olaf College.[1]

Career and activism

Costa joined Amazon in 2002 at the Seattle headquarters. Costa said it was exciting to be at Amazon in the early years, but described the culture as "intense" with a heavy rate of corporate employee turnover due to excessive firings. She said her therapist asked her if she was in a social experiment after she got pregnant and suggested she may have been the first employee in her organization to have a child. She quit in 2011 due to what she believed was an incompatibility between the culture and having two young children. She re-joined the company in 2014 and eventually was promoted into a principal user experience design role.[2][3][4]

Toward the end of 2018, Costa joined Emily Cunningham, a former Amazon user experience designer, in a climate change initiative Amazon employee-led shareholder proposal.[5] In early 2019, the company met with Costa, Cunningham, and additional employees referring to themselves as Amazon Employees For Climate Justice to discuss the proposal, later announcing a carbon offset plan. The company requested the employees withdraw their proposal.[6][7][8] After giving a quote to the press about the initiative, Costa was warned by the company that she had violated the company's policies involving "external communications" and threatened that repeated occurrences would result in termination.[5][9]

On April 11, 2020, Costa was discharged by Amazon after she had amplified an initiative led by Cunningham to organize employees involving concerns about warehouse workplace conditions involving the COVID-19 pandemic and tweeting that she would match donations to organizing employees in the group Amazonians United.[3][10] Costa filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the agency found that Costa's firing was unlawful. Amazon maintained the termination was not a violation,[11] but agreed to a settlement involving lost wages.[12] Amazon was also required to post notices clarifying employee rights involving employee organizing in offices and warehouses.[13]

In 2021, Costa announced on LinkedIn she was joining Microsoft as principal lead designer.[14]

Costa has 9 patents pending.[15]

City council campaign

Costa announced her candidacy for the Seattle City Council's District 1 seat ahead of the 2023 election. She placed first in the primary and advanced to the general election; Costa won the endorsement of the six opponents running for the seat who had not advanced from the primary.[16]

Personal life

Costa is divorced and has two children.[5][2]

See also

References
  1. Maren Costa on LinkedIn
  2. "The Prime Effect: The Faces Of Amazon's Workforce". WKNO. July 30, 2021. Archived from the original on March 14, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  3. Ball, David P. Ball (June 5, 2020). "Inside Amazon with a fired whistleblower and former VP: Maren Costa and Tim Bray". Canada's National Observer. Archived from the original on August 22, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  4. Palmer, Annie (September 29, 2021). "Amazon settles with two employees who said they were fired over activism". CNBC. Archived from the original on January 29, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  5. Savransky, Becca (May 12, 2020). "A Seattle-based Amazon employee spoke up for workers' rights. Then, she was fired". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Archived from the original on May 9, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  6. Conger, Kate (December 16, 2018). "Tech Workers Got Paid in Company Stock. They Used It to Agitate for Change". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 12, 2022. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  7. Pasternack, Alex (May 23, 2019). "The dramatic moment when an Amazon worker asked Jeff Bezos to protect planet Earth". Fast Company. Archived from the original on May 12, 2021. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  8. Weise, Karen (April 10, 2019). "Over 4,200 Amazon Workers Push for Climate Change Action, Including Cutting Some Ties to Big Oil". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 11, 2022. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  9. Greene, Jay (January 2, 2020). "Amazon threatens to fire critics who are outspoken on its environmental policies". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on January 2, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  10. Greene, Jay (April 14, 2020). "Amazon fires two tech workers who criticized the company's warehouse workplace conditions". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on December 18, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  11. Weise, Karen (April 5, 2021). "Amazon Illegally Fired Activist Workers, Labor Board Finds". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 12, 2022. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  12. Weise, Karen (September 29, 2021). "Amazon settles with activist workers who say they were illegally fired". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 12, 2022. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  13. Bhuiyan, Johana (October 9, 2021). "'Welcome to the party': five past tech whistleblowers on the pitfalls of speaking out". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 26, 2022. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
  14. Kuhlman, Care (March 15, 2021). "Tech Moves: Microsoft hires activist fired by Amazon; ex-Sprint CEO leaves F5 Networks board". GeekWire. Archived from the original on March 13, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  15. Bort, Julie (May 7, 2020). "Jeff Bezos has become too removed from employees to see what's really going on, say the fired Amazon tech workers who inspired a VP to publicly quit". Business Insider. Archived from the original on March 13, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
  16. Beekman, Daniel (August 15, 2023). "All 6 former opponents endorse Costa over Saka in Seattle council race". The Seattle Times. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
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