Ben Palkowski's Statement on Sierra Club Lawsuit

I recently learned that Sierra Club has filed a lawsuit against me for supposedly breaching my employment contract and my fiduciary duty by emailing company information from my company email address to my personal email address.

I will be speaking more about this at a later time. For now, I offer the following brief comments and context.

Sierra Club initially brought me in to help address some of its longstanding campaign finance compliance issues in 2020, at the beginning of a financially tumultuous time for the organization.

Later that year, following the unexpected resignation of the Controller, CFO and several board members, Sierra Club management tasked me with additional accounting duties.

For the ensuing two years or so, I often found myself at odds with management’s accounting approaches from time to time, particularly when it came to accounting for restricted donations (for example, when a Will of a deceased donor directed that a bequest be used for a particular purpose, rather than for Sierra Club’s general purposes), and how Sierra Club accounted for its political activity.

Sierra Club is correct; I did send emails to myself. Several, actually. Indeed, I even had incoming and outgoing emails set to automatically copy to my personal email during stretches of time when management was pressuring me to do one thing or another, or attempting to put me in a precarious position. That was my only objective in preserving emails: to cover my arse!

Our employment relationship was amusing on the surface, but quite toxic beneath. Sierra Club needed me, but did not know exactly why, other than for my technical expertise and that I was an outsider they could potentially manipulate. Meanwhile, I was never really professionally or emotionally committed to the organization, only the “pandemic paycheck,” as I often put it, while I was working and waiting to re-open an office in Massachusetts.

My refusal to serve as a corporate officer was likley a turning point. That was probably the first indication I gave to Sierra Club that I had no long-term interest in being associated with them, and that I was suspiscious of certain individuals. Instead of vieweing me as a friendly "fixer," management saw me as more of an adversary and potential scapegoat. This appeared to hold true when management attempted to railroad me in connection with some campaign finance compliance issues during the 2022 elections, shortly before my departure.

Accordingly, in my view, Sierra Club’s lawsuit is a retaliatory move, and folks inside Sierra Club have confirmed to me as much.

Until I comment further, I welcome any calls from my clients, colleagues, media, or anyone who may have questions about this matter.

Thank you.

Ben Palkowski