In a blog post this week, Jacob McKean announced he has relinquished his CEO post and has started the process of recruiting a replacement. McKean apologised that “anyone has ever had to face harassment at Modern Times”, adding that the craft brewer will overhaul its reporting procedures for harassment.
“It is now incredibly obvious that the process we have had for reporting harassment has not made people feel safe,” he said.
McKean, who founded Modern Times in 2013 and helped build it up to the 40th largest US craft brewer by volume, according to Brewers Association rankings, apologised to staff for a “contentious interaction” with an employee on internal communications platform Slack about a year ago.
In his blog post, McKean said Modern Times is to conduct bystander training and enhanced anti-harassment training for all staff and prioritise the hiring of a diversity manager. “I sincerely apologise again for all of the hurt this has caused, both internally and externally, and I am committed to healing it, whatever that takes,” McKean wrote.
The exit of the CEO follows a number of women speaking out recently about the alleged harassment they have experienced while working for US craft brewers. Brienne Allan, production manager for Massachusetts-based Notch Brewing, posted a collection of the stories on an Instagram account called ‘@ratmagnet’. Some of the stories sent to Allan were about Modern Times.
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