2 — Tuesday, February 18, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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Artist Leslie Sobel displays her work, titled “Shrines & Reliquaries: Memorizing Climate,” at the A. Alfred Taubman Health Center. The collection of mixed media boxes, using various 
mediums of painting, monotype, photography, and more, each showcase places being altered by climate change. The collection is being displayed though March 6, 2020. 

Mars reacts to allegations 
One allegation detailed in The 
Verge comes from one of Mars’s 
former doctoral students, who 
worked at Clinc alongside his 
girlfriend. He claimed Mars made 
inappropriate comments about 
his girlfriend at an event at Revel 
and Roll bowling alley. Allegedly, 
Mars said she had a “nice ass,” 
asked if she “shaved” and said, 
“She can sit on my face.” 
The source, identified as Ryan 
in The Verge’s article, spoke to The 
Daily and corroborated this story, 
adding Mars’s wife was in earshot 
when Mars spoke inappropriately 
about Ryan’s girlfriend and did 
not speak up. He also clarified 
when he and his girlfriend left 
Clinc after the incident, his 
girlfriend explained to Mars and 
Tang why she was leaving, so the 
pair has been explicitly aware of 
Mars’s misconduct since June 
2017, according to Ryan.
Ryan said since leaving Clinc, 
he’s become more aware of what 
a toxic environment the company 
was. 
“Every weird way he acted 
towards people, I realized it was all 
just a sociopathic manipulation,” 
Ryan said. 
Another Clinc employee told 
The Verge she was groped and 
verbally harassed by Mars at a 
bar during a business trip to San 
Francisco. She said she did not 
report the incident out of fear of 
losing her job. 
Employees 
claimed 
a 
comparable incident happened 
on a business trip to San Antonio, 
during which Clinc was working 
on a project with one of its clients, 
USAA. At a social event at a bar, 
Mars allegedly groped a female 
USAA employee and told her, “I 
want to do nasty things to you.”
The female employee did not 
report the harassment to USAA. 
She told The Verge she did not 
want an HR investigation on her 
employee record. 
The 
Verge’s 
article 
also 
described 
some 
instances 
of 

conversations 
that 
crossed 
professional 
boundaries. 
For 
instance, Mars allegedly asked 
employees to name their sexual 
fetishes at a social event at his and 
Tang’s house. 
Sam, a former Clinc intern 
and 
full-time 
employee 
kept 
anonymous in this article due to 
fear of retaliation, confirmed this 
story in an interview with The 
Daily. He said he was an intern at 
the time, and the event shook his 
admiration for Mars. He also said 
when Ryan, who was also present 
at the social event, called Mars out 
for acting inappropriately, Mars 
shrugged it off.
“I just remember him leaning 
into me, and he’s like, ‘So, tell me 
about your sexual fetishes,’” Sam 
said. “I just kinda made something 
up and it went around the circle.”
Mars provided The Daily with a 
statement on Saturday afternoon. 
In an email to The Daily, he denied 
all accusations and emphasized 
the findings of the investigation 
into the two legal claims against 
him. 
“I vehemently deny any and all 
allegations of sexual misconduct,” 
Mars wrote. “Moreover, many of 
the allegations made about me are 
without merit or are fabrications. 
The outside investigator hired 
by Clinc’s board concluded that 
certain events that were alleged 
did not happen as claimed, and 
that allegations of retaliation 
were without merit. I valued my 
relationships with my colleagues 
and have the utmost respect for 
the men and women with whom I 
worked on a daily basis.”
Mars added there have been 
no complaints against him from 
University students. 
“To 
date, 
there 
are 
no 
complaints 
at 
the 
University 
of Michigan from anyone who 
was/is my graduate student nor 
undergraduate students in my 
class,” he wrote. “As there’s been 
no complaints from my students, 
there also isn’t and has never 
been any investigations into my 
conduct with students at the 
University throughout my years of 
service.” 
Tang did not respond to The 

Daily’s request for comment.
The recent investigation was 
prompted by two legal claims 
against Mars. One of these 
claims came from Brian Rider, 
vice president of innovation and 
strategy at Clinc. According to a 
letter from Rider’s lawyer, on a 
November 2019 business trip to 
San Francisco, Mars showed Rider 
pornographic videos and asked 
Rider to watch him receive oral 
sex from a prostitute. In its article, 
The Verge published a recording 
of a conversation between Mars 
and Rider regarding this incident.
In response to the official 
claims 
that 
surfaced 
in 
December, public relations firm 
MWWPR conducted a five-week, 
independent investigation into 
Clinc, interviewing 17 current and 
former employees and reviewing 
materials such as emails and 
company reports. 
According to a statement from 
MWWPR, the specific allegations 
being addressed did not occur as 
claimed, but the investigation did 
illuminate some misbehavior.
“The investigation did highlight 
instances where behavior has 
been a distraction to the success 
of Clinc and also concluded 
that 
complaints 
concerning 
such behavior were promptly 
addressed by Clinc leadership,” 
the statement reads.
After stepping down as CEO 
Monday and leaving Tang and 
Laurenzano as interim co-CEOs, 
Mars, 
in 
a 
company 
email, 
criticized the allegations but 
acknowledged he had crossed 
some boundaries.
“Although 
the 
allegations 
against 
me 
are 
rife 
with 
embellishments and fabrications 
some of which came out in the 
investigation, the truth is there 
were cases where I drank too 
much and partied with employees 
in a way that’s not becoming of 
a CEO,” the email reads. “I’ve 
learned a hard lesson about seeing 
my employees as friends and the 
importance of setting proper 
boundaries 
when 
socializing 
outside the workplace.”
Clinc did not respond to The 
Daily’s requests for comment in 

time for publication. 
Clinc 
employees 
describe 
toxic company culture 
Jordan, a University senior 
who asked to remain anonymous 
due to fear of retaliation and will 
be referred to using a pseudonym, 
interned at Clinc. They said the 
stories presented in The Verge 
did not come as a surprise. In 
fact, Jordan said they had heard 
of all the allegations in The Verge 
article.
“When this article came out, 
the scariest part was that none of 
it was news to me,” Jordan said. 
According to Jordan, Mars’s 
alleged 
misbehavior 
was 
common knowledge among Clinc 
employees.
“It was just kind of company 
folklore to hear all these stories 
about him,” Jordan said. “I think 
everyone at the company heard the 
story about him sexually assaulting 
a customer one time, and it was just 
kind of thought of as, ‘Oh, this is our 
CEO, this is what he does and we 
have to deal with it.’”
Another 
former 
Clinc 
employee, referred to as Emily for 
the sake of anonymity, said she 
also heard about several instances 
of sexual harassment during her 
time at Clinc. She said she would 
deliberately avoid having to spend 
time with Mars — and Tang — 
one-on-one or outside of work.
Jake, an LSA student who 
interned at Clinc, said he knew 
about 
two 
of 
the 
incidents 
mentioned in The Verge article, 
including 
the 
one 
involving 
Ryan. Others came as a surprise, 
though he didn’t see them as out 
of character for Mars. 
Jake said he first noticed Mars’s 
inappropriate behavior while at a 
bar with Mars, alleging that Mars 
drunkenly tried to convince a 
married Clinc employee to have 
sex with someone else. 
“He was very lecherous in his 
behavior, talked about women in a 
demeaning manner,” Jake said. “I 
was an intern, I didn’t know what 
to do. I wanted to call him out for 
it, but at the same time, it’s like, 
this is my livelihood, this is my 
job, I don’t want to get fired.”

ALLEGATIONS
From Page 2

See ALLEGATIONS, Page 3

