Great idea CEO a nightmare - Anonymous employee Sama Employee Review

1.0
23 Oct 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Incredible idea and mission that could have been the great thing they claim in all their press. Some great people there for the right reasons. Decent work like balance.

Cons

CEO "borrowed" charitable money contributions from samasource to launch her for profit cosmetic line and then misrepresented that fact to the press in interviews like Fast Company. CEO uses company funds to do things like stay at $1,000 a night resorts for a wedding, hanging out with friends and riding horses (pictures on Facebook). CEO is great in public but behind closed doors is only interested in promoting herself and is a poor manager and turnover is about 100% annually as a result. The entire development team quit as a result of leadership claiming at the gala that fund a need money would go to doctors in the samahope program. Instead they built a party bus with the money and not one penny went to doctors. CEO has a loose relationship with the truth and engages in financial dealings as a non-profit that need to be subjected to a real rigorous external audit. Her personality gets most people to trust her and buy into her ideas and then they seem not to look behind the curtain.

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Sama Response
10y
The concerns raised by this former employee include unsubstantiated and libelous claims of financial misdealings. As CFO of Sama Group I am well positioned to respond with facts to each one of these: First, Samasource is unique for non-profit it that it has an earned revenue business that generates unrestricted funding. Our organization uses these unrestricted funds for projects that we feel are imparative in furthering our mission; including funding consumer outreach and donor events of which the Samabus is a key component. We also receive donations and grants for specific programs and purposes; we clearly segregate, account and disburse these amounts for the exact purpose they were intended and report this activity rigorously and frequently. We are subject to external audits at least annually, from both a certified public accounting firm and our grantors to ensure expenditures are appropriately accounted for and the records show we have never had anything but an "unqualification opinion" (clean bill of accounting health) from our audits. Second, the Laxmi cosmetics line is run by a subsidiary for-profit public benefit company with a mission aligned purpose, that has been entirely financed by private 3rd party investors. Sama contributed nothing save negligible legal fees for its ownership stake, and stands to gain access to more unrestricted funds with future success of this venture. Third, every penny of the funds raised for SamaHope at the Gala was distributed to the doctors named within weeks of the 2014 Gala and the doctors in turn were able to perform the lifesaving surgeries and treatments on hundreds of patients. The CEO does not use company funds for personal expenses - she is a well known and extremely sought after public speaker and has a signficant social media presence but that does not imply the company is paying for her personal activities. Our organization holds transparency and accountability in the highest regard; we invite this commentor to seek substantiation of these claims beyond speculation towards a public retraction of these comments.

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