Top Scientist at Fancy Biotech Firm Says It Was a #MeToo Nightmare

Lara Silverman was at a company-wide meeting in the summer of 2013 when her CEO allegedly scowled and pointed at her pregnant belly before the entire room.

Then the highest-ranking scientist at DiscGenics, a Salt Lake City biotech startup, Silverman had disclosed to her employer months before that she was expecting her first child. Now the company’s chief executive, Flagg Flanagan, was suddenly putting her in the spotlight. “How is she going to do her job now?” she recalls Flanagan griping to her colleagues.

“I was just mortified,” Silverman, who has a Ph.D. in medical engineering, told The Daily Beast. “We were all shocked.” Face flushing in embarrassment, Silverman looked down at her lap for the remainder of the meeting. The 38-year-old mom and first-generation American says she remembers this as the moment the boys’ club atmosphere at her male-dominated startup became “explicitly discriminatory” toward her.

And it wasn’t the last alleged instance of discrimination toward her or other women during her decade at the company, which was founded around 2007 by disgraced Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, nicknamed Dr. Death for paralyzing and killing patients. Duntsch, now serving life in prison, was booted from the firm in 2012.

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In a new federal lawsuit filed in Utah on Monday, Silverman and Jeffrey Poole, former chief financial officer and head of HR, paint a picture of a sexist and problematic work culture so blatant that during one meeting in 2021, Flanagan allegedly joked that he wished to be cremated and for someone to toss his ashes into his wife’s face so he “could get one last blow job.”

Silverman and Poole’s complaint claims that DiscGenics retaliated against them with disciplinary action after they complained to the board of directors about Flanagan’s alleged discrimination against Silverman. Poole was terminated last June, while Silverman says she was forced to resign weeks later because her work environment grew “intolerable.”

Flanagan did not return messages seeking comment.

Christine Wzorek, an HR representative for DiscGenics, said that Silverman and Poole filed charges last year with the Utah Antidiscrimination and Labor Division (UALD), which “thoroughly investigated” their claims. “In January 2022, the UALD found No Reasonable Cause to believe that DiscGenics had discriminated or retaliated against either Poole or Silverman and dismissed each charge in its entirety, giving their reasons in a detailed and thorough Determination and Order for each charge,” Wzorek told The Daily Beast in an email. “DiscGenics will vigorously fight these claims in court.”

Silverman and Poole are represented by Crumiller PC, a feminist litigation firm in Brooklyn.

In response to DiscGenics’ statement, Crumiller attorney Julia Elmaleh-Sachs told The Daily Beast that “the UALD is an overburdened state administrative agency with limited enforcement power and investigative resources.”

“Its purported ‘investigation’ into our clients' claims did not include any hearing, any sworn testimony, any interviews with dozens of witnesses our clients put forth, nor any of the ordinary discovery tools utilized in a court of law,” Elmaleh-Sachs said. “We are confident that a jury of Dr. Silverman’s and Mr. Poole’s peers will hold DiscGenics wholly accountable for the unlawful manner it discriminated and retaliated against them.”

Elmaleh-Sachs continued, “I can’t recall the last time I saw such horrific and explicit sexist conduct at work—certainly rarely since #MeToo.

“Such blatant discrimination and retaliation is traumatic for anyone, but especially for employees like Silverman and Poole, who came from little and worked extremely hard to attend Ivy League schools or spend decades climbing the corporate latter. It just shows that no matter how hard someone works, an employer’s discriminatory view of women and mothers can—and often does—sadly eclipse professional merit and dedication.”

After the 2013 company meeting, “Flanagan continued to make snide remarks” about Silverman’s first pregnancy and “glared conspicuously” at her body, the complaint alleges. She says she took only two weeks of maternity leave, despite having an emergency C-section, because she feared her employment was at stake. The lawsuit alleges that Flanagan and Chief Operating & Commercialization Officer Bob Wynalek told her that they “had no one else” and “needed [her] on calls.” (Wynalek declined to comment and referred The Daily Beast to DiscGenics’ lawyer.)

Silverman claims Flanagan again discriminated against her in 2015 when she was pregnant with her second child. According to the complaint, Flanagan walked into her office unexpectedly and declared he was setting up a “transition plan” for her to exit the company, which has roughly 30 employees. Now that she had two children, Flanagan allegedly explained, he assumed that she “would no longer be able to do her job.”

"That was really when I started noticing that there was a problem,” Silverman told The Daily Beast.

DiscGenics, which has raised more than $71 million in venture capital, is developing regenerative cell-based therapies to treat pain and restore function in patients with degenerative diseases of the spine. The company is chiefly focused on an injectable disc cell therapy, which is now in clinical trials in the U.S. and Japan. Last October, the company issued a press release announcing that Goldman Sachs had named Flanagan as one of “the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2021.”

The startup’s origins with Dr. Death, however, haven’t been as publicized. The lawsuit alleges that after DiscGenics fired Duntsch, he “left in his wake a company fraught with unlawful sexual harassment, gender and pregnancy discrimination, and a workplace culture that is perhaps best described as a nightmare for women.”

“Unfortunately, even with such impressive credentials and a breadth of scientific responsibilities, Silverman was not shielded from the pervasive sexism at DiscGenics, where all five members of the board of directors are men, and where there has never been a woman on the executive team or board,” the filing states. “In fact, because of Silverman’s academic achievements and high-level position, she was often—if not always—the prime victim of the all-male C-suite’s sex-based hostility.”

The lawsuit also alleges DiscGenics repeatedly refused to change Silverman’s title to Chief Science Officer—a role previously held by Duntsch—“to accurately reflect her experience level and job duties.” Flanagan and Wynalek, she claims, claimed she didn’t “deserve” the promotion. “It is difficult to comprehend how a man with no practical scientific experience who would later go on to become one of the world’s worst neurosurgeons could somehow be deserving of the title of CSO,” the complaint says, “while a woman with multiple advanced degrees in medical engineering—who spent years successfully doing her job as the highest-ranking scientist in the company—was not.”

Poole told The Daily Beast that when he joined DiscGenics in 2020, the sexist work environment he observed was “anything but subtle.”

“It was just so pervasive and obvious that I knew that I had to do something about it,” Poole said. “I can’t let this continue because then I’d basically be an accomplice to it, but there was really nowhere to raise it because I knew that the CEO was best friends with all of the board members, and they had been friends for 30 years, and I was the new guy.”

Poole was a CFO at Medtronic, a $30 billion medical device company, when Flanagan recruited him and suggested he would become CEO after he retired. “It was evident to Poole that Flanagan wrongly assumed because Poole was a man—with a Southern accent, just like him—he would be an enthusiastic participant in the pervasive sexual banter and inappropriate conduct,” the lawsuit says.

Flanagan told Poole that he wanted “help getting rid of” Silverman because she “thinks she’s the smartest person in the room,” according to the complaint. The lawsuit adds that “in private discussions with Poole and Wynalek, Flanagan referred to at least five female employees as having ‘resting bitch face’” and “showed a particular disdain for women with Ph.Ds, referring to them as ‘brats’ and ‘merely academics,’ who ‘lack[ed] business skills.’”

Poole also noticed that “Flanagan’s immediate reaction to any suggestion or idea brought forward by a female manager was that it was ‘bad’ or ‘worthless,’” the filing states.

The former CFO told The Daily Beast that in light of Flanagan’s “derogatory comments” about Silverman to other executives, he wanted to hear her side of the story. He worried the work culture he observed would put the startup’s reputation at risk.

“This thing I built over 10 years, it was my baby, it was my work, it was everything I published on,” Silverman told us. “When Jeff [Poole] approached me and asked if I felt comfortable to share my side of the story. I said yes, because I didn’t want this thing to fall apart. I wanted to make sure the science saw the light of day.”

Poole said that his struggles at DiscGenics brought him closer to his wife, who overheard Flanagan’s comments when he had work Zoom calls during COVID. “My wife has had some horrible bosses in the past, and no one would ever stand up for her,” he told The Daily Beast. “A couple of weeks into the company, I asked her, ‘What am I going to do?’ She’s like, ‘You’re going to protect Lara.’ So I fortunately had her support and backing throughout all of this.”

For her part, Silverman initially tried to ignore or correct Flanagan’s alleged commentary. Her suit claims Flanagan referred to women scientists as “girls” and declared DiscGenics should be called “Dickgenics” and focus on making “larger dicks” (an anecdote that apparently made it to Peacock’s miniseries on Duntsch). The complaint says Flanagan and Wynalek mocked one colleague’s woodworking hobby, claiming she was was gay and “fabricating dildos.”

At a 2016 work dinner, the lawsuit alleges, Silverman was humiliated after Flanagan told a story about a female patient who underwent neck surgery and was later found in the recovery room performing oral sex on her husband. “Wynalek laughed at the story in delight and commented that she was a ‘loyal wife’ and was ‘doing her job,’” the complaint says.

The filing also alleges that in 2019, Flanagan walked into a staff meeting and declared he was “much more relaxed today” because his wife had “taken care of him” the previous night. That year, the complaint adds, DiscGenics moved into a new facility, and Flanagan installed cameras in the lab and “reminded staff often that he was ‘watching’ them.”

Meanwhile, colleagues allegedly feared Flanagan’s temper. Court papers say the CEO was known to pound his fists on the conference table, “berate” employees, and once warned a group of workers: “If anyone ever double-crosses me, they are fucked.”

Flanagan, the complaint alleges, retaliated against a departing female employee by contacting her new company, which he argued was a competitor, and threatened to sue them; the firm rescinded her offer. “From then on, employees did not notify DiscGenics of their next employer or even to what state they were moving,” the suit says.

Amanda Jones, a former associate scientist at DiscGenics, told The Daily Beast that Flanagan began to sleep at the office, which made her and female coworkers who worked late uncomfortable. She said people were afraid to speak up about workplace issues, including about how Silverman was treated, because of Flanagan’s fury.

Jones said she gave notice soon after Silverman and Poole departed, but not immediately, to avoid a backlash from Flanagan. She was apparently among 11 women who left the company between November 2020 and November 2021, according to the suit.

In fall of 2020, Poole approached Kevin Foley, a board director and chief medical officer at DiscGenics, with complaints from female employees. (Foley was Duntsch’s supervisor during his fellowship at the Semmes-Murphey Clinic in Memphis.) “Although Foley had asked Poole to share his concerns, whenever Poole actually did so, Foley cut him off abruptly and said, “deep down, I think Flagg [Flanagan]’s a good person,” the lawsuit alleges.

But after Silverman and Poole briefed Foley and another board member with complaints about the alleged workplace misogyny, the company stripped Poole of his HR duties shortly before firing him in June 2021. (Foley could not be reached for comment.)

As for Silverman, Wynalek and a third-party HR consultant informed her they were putting her on a performance improvement plan, which included directives such as “You must create and promote a positive work team environment for not only your direct reports, but also with upper management…” and “Under no circumstances are you to work to create internal alliances for personal gain.”

Silverman later learned the HR consultant also conducted an “investigation” into her complaints and found them to be unsubstantiated. Her lawsuit says nine employees were interviewed, including two women, but neither Silverman nor Poole were questioned. The complaint alleges one of the women reported directly to Flanagan, while the other was a family friend of the CEO. “Female employees declined to comment on discomfort with casual conversation of leadership,” a report on the probe allegedly said.

In June 2021, Silverman received a carefully worded letter from HR, signed by Flanagan and denying misconduct. “I may have engaged in locker room banter from time to time, and in doing so, I may have caused some employees to feel uncomfortable,” the missive read. “I assure you, and will assure others as appropriate, that such discussions will not occur again.”

The letter from Flanagan continued, “Finally, as I’ll explain below with the help of my legal counsel, nothing I have done could possibly be characterized as legally actionable sexual harassment.” Flanagan wrote that he didn’t “realize that Lara was offended by occasional sexual banter,” the lawsuit states.

Silverman resigned weeks later after executives began to disregard her at meetings and reduced her job responsibilities. She says she was left traumatized by this experience and wants accountability for DiscGenics employees and women in STEM. “I’m just trying to keep my head down and take care of myself,” she told The Daily Beast. “And I think one of the biggest things has been I get a lot more time with my kids, and I really enjoy identifying as a mom and being a mom. Because that was something that I felt like I always had to hide, because it was treated as a negative part of me, and it’s been really wonderful to fully embrace that part of my life since leaving.”

“I imagine one day when my kids are old enough,” she said, tearing up, “I’ll be really proud to tell them that I stood up for this.”