A top Apple executive is facing accusations of fostering a toxic work environment — including allegations that he suggestively leered at coworkers and made inappropriate remarks about fitness trainers’ breasts and butts, according to a report.
Jay Blahnik, vice president for fitness technologies, allegedly bullied subordinates who made HR complaints and pushed more than 10% of his team to seek mental health leaves of absence since 2022, according to a New York Times report.
Blahnik, 57, leads a division of roughly 100 staffers after joining the company in 2013 to work on the Apple Watch – a wild success at the time that helped boost sales after Steve Jobs’ death.
But Blahnik could be verbally abusive and inappropriate, according to nine current and former employees who spoke to the Times. He also allegedly made frequent inappropriate remarks about colleagues and clients at Apple.
The longtime Apple exec would remark on the breasts and butts of trainers who filmed workouts for the app, according to other sources who worked on the team.
“At the end of the day, we don’t matter,” Kayla Desautels, who led the fitness team’s social media before leaving last year following a mental health leave, told the Times. She added that she had “never worked anywhere more toxic.”
During a meeting in 2021 about a fitness feature on Olympic skier Ted Ligety, Blahnik joked about sleeping with the skier, two sources who attended the meeting told the Times.
Blahnik later suggested that a member of the team had convinced Ligety to do the feature by offering the skier a neck massage, according to the report.
Apple has settled a claim of sexual harassment against Blahnik, and he is currently facing a lawsuit alleging retaliation.
An Apple spokesperson told the New York Times that “there are many inaccurate claims and mischaracterizations” in the story.
At another time, Blahnik allegedly implied that one employee’s wife must have had an affair with another man since their son had a different hair color, according to several former employees.
He would leer at the team’s creative director, Wil Tidman, and compliment his outfits – one time joking with staff that Tidman was having an affair with a male producer, sources told the Times.
Then in 2022, Blahnik sent Tidman a text message that Tidman found inappropriate and unsettling, two sources familiar with the message said.
Tidman left work on a medical leave shortly after the message, hired a lawyer and raised a harassment claim with Apple, according to a former employee’s lawsuit. Tidman himself did not file a lawsuit, but reached a settlement with the company.
Apple also denied claims of “harassment, discrimination [and] retaliation” in a lawsuit filed by former employee Mandana Mofidi, 41, who claimed she was bullied and retaliated against for making a complaint to human resources about Blahnik.
In a legal filing, Apple said Mofidi had “received constructive feedback and coaching from her supervisors in response to a well-documented history of unresolved performance issues.”
Apple and Blahnik did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Mofidi, who joined Apple’s audio team in 2021, claimed that Blahnik had praised her work early on — but that changed after she spoke to HR about the investigation into Tidman’s complaint, according to the lawsuit.
During a review with Blahnik in her first year at Apple, she raised concerns that she had received a smaller raise than her male counterparts, according to the lawsuit.
The next day at work, Mofidi alleges that she was asked to speak with HR about Tidman’s complaint.
Mofidi tried to excuse herself from the investigation – claiming she was “nervous” about “his vindictiveness” – but was told it was mandatory, the suit said.
During a team meeting two days later, Blahnik exploded and started yelling at Mofidi about a missed deadline to settle on music choices for an episode, according to the suit.
That yelling episode “kicks off this whole campaign that ensues for months,” Mofidi alleged.
Mofidi started to receive emails from one of Blahnik’s employees criticizing her work, which she believed was a coordinated effort to create a record of poor performance and fire her, the suit claimed.
Two colleagues, Chris Neil and Nathan Olivarez-Giles, had similar retaliatory experiences after speaking about Tidman’s harassment claim, three former employees told the Times.
Neil and Olivarez-Giles took mental health breaks from Apple and ultimately left the company.
In early 2023, Mofidi said she was told she needed to choose between a buyout offer or a performance improvement plan.
She told human resources that she was being targeted because of the sexual harassment review and her comments about unequal pay.
Human resources launched an investigation and assured Mofidi she would not be retaliated against – but the behavior continued, according to her lawsuit.
Apple Wellness, the company’s health service for employees, found Mofidi was suffering from anxiety and depression, so she took a medical leave of absence, according to the suit.
She asked to move to another division after her leave ended, but her request was denied, and Mofidi submitted her resignation, the suit said.
Her lawsuit is set to go to trial in 2027.
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