Terra Field, a Netflix employee who helped organize protests following the premiere of the controversial Dave Chappelle special, The Closer, has resigned from the company.
In the special, Chappelle doubled down on previous insensitive remarks about the trans community. Rather than asking Netflix to take down the special, protesting employees demanded the company put commensurate resources into the work of transgender creators.
Field was a senior software engineer and part of Netflix’s transgender employee research group. On Monday, she shared her resignation letter on social media.
Field and B. Pagels-Minor both organized a walkout at the company. Field said when Pagels-Minor was fired, it pushed her to make a decision.
When I was looking to change teams at Netflix, when I was trying to decide if I needed a break from my ERG leadership role, and when I was suspended from Netflix in October, there was one person whose advice I sought in all three cases: B. Pagels-Minor. Shortly after B. was fired for something I did not and do not believe they did, I made a decision: sink or swim, I was going to walk side by side with B. as they had for so many of us while they led the Trans* ERG.
Fields wrote her letter specifically to three groups at Netflix: her Base OS team, the Trans* ERG group and Netflix’s I&D team.
Fields said she was incredibly honored to be a part of the Trans* ERG group.
It is impossible to emphasize how important the ERG was to me the entire time I was at the company, and how incredibly honored I was to be a part of it while we grew from just a handful of members to dozens of people attending meetings. The company might prefer the sports team metaphor, but when it comes to the ERG there is only one way I can describe how I feel about you all: Family.
Moving forward, Field said she’ll be taking some much needed time off ahead of her next endeavor.
