Yahoo Finance Tech CEO Wants Former Employee to Fork Over $1.5M for ‘Profane’ Harassment
The CEO of the online learning company Skillshare is suing an aggrieved former employee for a minimum of $1.5 million, claiming her “inexplicable and meritless hatred of the company has led her to pursue a four-year campaign of harassment of Skillshare and its directors and employees.”
Kelley Miller has sent “innumerable profane and threatening emails” to Skillshare boss Matt Cooper, and has made “disparaging comments about the company to its partners, customers and vendors through social media platforms,” according to the lawsuit, which Cooper filed Friday in New York State Supreme Court.
Miller blamed Cooper for ruining her career, the lawsuit states, accusing her of calling him, among many other things, a “misogynistic piece of shit,” a “vile piece of shit,” “such a piece of shit,” “the scum of the fucking earth,” a “low life,” a “wretched liar,” a “corrupt narcissist,” a “cunt,” a “punk,” and a “fucking disgrace of a human.”
In the suit, Cooper says that, while he and Skillshare are “sympathetic to [Miller] for any hardship she has endured in her personal life, her groundless animosity towards the company, which she has aired publicly and which directly violates her separation agreement, has caused, and continues to cause, immense reputational and pecuniary damage to the company.”
But Miller, who worked in sales for the platform over the course of five years, told The Daily Beast on Friday after the lawsuit was filed against her that she had good reason to fight back, claiming she was demoted after calling out sexist behavior by a Skillshare executive—with things eventually becoming so dire that she attempted suicide.
In an email on Friday, attorney Adam Felsenstein, who is representing Cooper and Skillshare, declined to comment on the case.
Miller joined Skillshare in May 2017 as a sales rep, and soon earned a promotion to manager of the enterprise sales team, according to the lawsuit. She told The Daily Beast that she had followed Cooper to the business after working for him at another company.
“He literally brought me into all of this mess, and I respected him,” she said. “I liked him. I looked up to him.”
According to the lawsuit, Miller had a conflict with her manager, though the suit doesn’t offer further detail. (Miller says she was demoted after she complained about the manager’s “misogynistic tendencies” and sexist behavior, alleging that he was also the subject of other employee grievances.)
Cooper says in the suit that Skillshare “investigated the facts surrounding the conflict and determined that the manager’s conduct, while inappropriate, was not grounds for termination.” However, it claims, Miller “was upset by the outcome, and after some discussion, decided to leave Skillshare voluntarily.” (“What am I going to do, stay there and then allow something worse to happen?” she told The Daily Beast.)
Miller was given a severance package and signed a non-disparagement agreement upon her exit, according to the suit.
After she left, Miller applied for a new job at another tech company. She had more than a half-dozen interviews with the new firm, she said; for her final interview, she met with a member of the board of directors.
“The interview goes really well,” Miller told The Daily Beast. “And towards the end of the interview, she says, ‘Oh, I’m very familiar with Skillshare, I’m really good friends with the founder.’ And the next thing I know I’m getting ghosted.”
Miller contended in a May 2021 email to Cooper, which was included in the lawsuit, that she lost the job opportunity because “Skillshare’s former founder… gave her an unfavorable reference.” (Cooper “denied having a specific recollection of Defendant or discussing her with any prospective employer,” according to the suit.)
In the email, which Miller sent at 6:34 a.m., she told Cooper she was planning to release unflattering evidence about him and what she said was a toxic atmosphere at the company, since he had “demolished [her] career and now… will be held accountable in the court of public opinion.”
“I have been unemployed and unable to find work since Skillshare because of your actions and inability to do what is right,” Miller wrote. “It has negatively impacted my life and psyche on a grand scale and, if not for the parameters put into place for the pandemic, I would be homeless… I’d love for you to try me. I have nothing to lose.”
Miller spent the next 18 months trying to get traction for her claims in the media, but was unsuccessful, she told The Daily Beast. So, in August 2023, she took her allegations to X, formerly known as Twitter, tagging Cooper and assorted Skillshare “partners and vendors,” the lawsuit states.
“Still waiting for you to address how you overlook work place [sic] discrimination and ruin the careers of innocent people who report it at Skillshare?” one post read. “I have been calling this out public[ly] for 1.5 years and haven’t received so much as a threatening letter from a lawyer. There is a reason for that.”
Miller “posted this message over fifty times tagging innumerable accounts,” the lawsuit claims, adding that she “also contacted the news organization Axios” on Twitter/X with a similar message.
“Whenever Skillshare would block [Miller] from posting on its Twitter/X page, [she] would open a new account to resume her conduct,” the suit says, alleging Miller “operated twelve different Twitter/X accounts to further her wrongful disparagement campaign.” She posted her accusations below articles Cooper had published on Medium, according to the lawsuit, while keeping up the email pressure simultaneously.
This past September, Miller itemized the damage she said Cooper had inflicted on her. By being forced out of Skillshare, Miller said in an email that she had lost out on $150,000 in salary, $300,000 in salary at the job she didn’t get, plus the “[i]nability to gain employment again.”
“No health insurance, paying out of pocket or not being able to go to the doctor at all and suffering because of it—I almost lost my life because of a suicide attempt,” Miller wrote to Cooper. “... YOU are the one who brought me into this environment. YOU recruited me on LinkedIn for Visually. YOU brought me to Skillshare. YOU built me up and just as quickly tore me down. YOU didn't stab me in the back. YOU stabbed me in the front with a smile on your face. You are a fucking disgrace of a human, a shit ‘leader’ and you owe me a lot. I will be waiting in the wings for your downfall. Cannot wait to cheer it on.”
Miller warned Cooper that he would “NEVER get rid of me until justice is served.”
“C’mon, you fucking punk,” she wrote. “Come at me.”
The emails, sometimes as many as 10 a day, continued through the rest of 2023, according to Cooper’s suit and related exhibits. Miller stayed consistently on-message, mincing no words in her feelings about Cooper. In other messages, Miller was more business-minded, reminding Cooper of her successes at Skillshare.
“I should be gainfully employed right now because I FUCKING WORKED FOR IT,” she wrote in an Oct. 30 email. “I even closed my department's two largest deals in its history while I was on my first vacation in 1.5 years, over the holidays AND while I was going through a legal process that I should never have been in the first place… THAT was the kind of employee I was. Even if you are not held accountable in this life, you will meet your maker one day and I take great solace in that. You will pay for what you did to my life, all the secrets you are keeping and what you are allowing to continue.”
In an affidavit Cooper filed along with the lawsuit, he said, “It became clear at this time that Defendant was blaming me and Skillshare for events in her life over which we had no involvement or control.”
Following a Dec. 6 email in which Miller told Cooper he was “the scum of the fucking earth and I hope you pay dearly for what you did and continue to do to me,” Skillshare’s attorneys sent Miller a cease-and-desist letter. But Miller didn’t stop, according to Cooper.
“Look forward to watching your career and reputation go up in flames,” she wrote in a Jan. 2 email. “2024 is the year. Know that when this happens, I will be thoroughly enjoying every single second of it. You deserve every amount of karma that is headed your way.”
The lawsuit says Cooper finally responded to Miller on Jan. 12, demanding she stop. He invited her to take him to court, or go public with her claims, calling it “your prerogative.” However, she told The Daily Beast on Friday that she stood her ground, telling Cooper, “Holding you accountable is not harassment.”
In a final email to Cooper sent Feb. 7, Miller drew a line in the sand, giving him until 9 a.m. on Feb. 23 to “hold yourself… accountable” or she’d release a video “with all evidence including names of any employees as well as links to their LinkedIn profiles who were involved/saw something and will send it to everyone in my network and anyone I can find in yours… including the influencers that Skillshare works with.”
“You will not fuck my life over and not be held accountable,” Miller wrote.
Cooper says in his affidavit that he has not seen the video, but believes it “contains false and defamatory material as well as proprietary information belonging [sic] the company.”
“If [Miller] is permitted to send it out to Skillshare’s business community, it will cause grievous and irreparable harm to the company,” it says, asking the court to issue an order blocking Miller from making the video public.
The lawsuit also asks the court to force Miller to stop contacting Cooper, arguing the CEO “has had to live under a daily, and sometimes hourly, litany of abuse from Defendant.”
“The profanity which Defendant hurls at him strains the bounds of all notions of decent conduct,” it says. “Skillshare is simply asking this Court to free him from her tirades during the pendency of this action.”
Miller called the gambit a “last resort thing,” adding, “If this is the way that my life is going to end up, I’m taking you down with me.”
She suspects the company is concerned about the video because, she believes, what she has could potentially hurt their brand, particularly since many of their users are young and left-leaning.
Despite the legal peril, Miller dismissed Cooper’s lawsuit as frivolous. “The fact that they’re trying to come at me for money is hilarious, because they’ve literally demolished my entire life,” she said. “Like, I can’t get a job. I’m getting evicted on March 15.”
Cooper and Skillshare are alleging breach of contract and defamation, and are asking for $500,000 on each of three individual causes of action.
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