Former Interns Say SpaceX Ignored Sexual Harassment

Ms. Kosak said in an interview that she felt compelled to go public with her experience at SpaceX after seeing the essay about Blue Origin, which was written by Alexandra Abrams, the company’s former head of employee communications, who was fired by Blue Origin in 2019.

On Nov. 8, Ms. Kosak said in an interview, she met with Ms. Shotwell and Brian Bjelde, the company’s human resources chief, about her complaint against the man who she said had groped her in 2018 as well as other sexual discrimination complaints, but made no progress. “It was a meeting where I spoke at them, they spoke at me, and we all left and that was that,” she said.

When Ms. Kosak resigned on Nov. 22, she said the man who touched her in 2018 was still working at SpaceX. The man’s LinkedIn profile shows he is still employed with the company.

Julia CrowleyFarenga interned for SpaceX from 2015 through 2017 while she was a student at Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She accused SpaceX in a lawsuit in 2020 of retaliation after she reported uncomfortable interactions with her manager, who would schedule longer performance meetings with her than her male colleagues and repeatedly ask questions about and comment on her dating life. Another manager allowed her to transfer to a different department, she said. But when she applied for a job in 2018, the lawsuit says, she learned the second manager blocked her from getting an offer despite high performance ratings. Ms. CrowleyFarenga and SpaceX settled the lawsuit earlier this year.

The former intern who went on to work for the company for five years said she witnessed and heard about sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. While rooming with other women during her internships in 2016 and 2017, “half of them had stories about situations that made them uncomfortable,” she said.

The fourth former intern said she, like Ms. Kosak, was harassed while living in housing offered by SpaceX for interns and employees that often put men and women together, sometimes sharing bathrooms. The company buys or rents homes and apartments near SpaceX’s launch sites, where other housing may be scarce.

In 2012, one former intern said she encountered a male employee who was invited over for drinks by her male housemate. The man became drunk and tried entering her bedroom as she was coming out of the shower, banging on the door and rattling the doorknob after asking her if she was naked.