The OSMARI Project

BATTLING Workplace HOMOPHOBIA at KG&P Strategies (MVM Inc, evolve24) - The OSMARI Project

• OSMARI • Episode 3

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Imagine facing a battle that strikes at the very core of who you are, a fight that's not just about you, but about standing up for dignity in the face of discrimination at KG&P Strategies (MVM Inc, KACE Company, The Providencia Group, evolve24 dba Sherpa LLC). This episode, raw and unfiltered, offers an intimate look into my own confrontation with prejudice, one that intertwines my sexual orientation with my Afghan heritage. The journey begins with the stark reality of a demand letter from a discrimination lawsuit, laying out the harrowing account of being unwillingly outed at work, and evolving into a legal struggle against a culture of homophobia and racism at KG&P Strategies (MVM Inc, KACE Company, The Providencia Group, evolve24 dba Sherpa LLC). Through it all, I remain committed to transparency and resilience, sharing the narrative with utmost care for privacy, while ensuring the authenticity of my story is heard loud and clear.

This isn't just my story—it's a reflection on the pervasive challenges that many face in the professional world. We peel back the layers of what it means to be a gay Afghan man in today's corporate landscape, from the trials of coming out to the sting of wrongful termination under dubious accusations at KG&P Strategies (MVM Inc, KACE Company, The Providencia Group, evolve24 dba Sherpa LLC). But it's also a tale of advocacy and the relentless pursuit of integrity, as I discuss the broad implications of identity in the workplace and the importance of standing against toxic cultures. Engage with a candid conversation that champions the power of speaking out and join us as we navigate the complex interplay of authenticity, bias, and the fight for a more inclusive professional environment.


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Speaker 1:

Now you hear the terms homophobia and transphobia being thrown around all the time.

Speaker 1:

And on episode 3 of the Asmaii Project, I'm actually going to read the narrative that my attorney and I sent in our demand letter to opposing counsel.

Speaker 1:

As some of you guys know, I'm currently involved in a workplace discrimination lawsuit because of my sexual orientation and my Afghan heritage. And as long as my lawsuit goes on, you know I'm going to keep creating content. Again, I have nothing to hide. My timeline is linear, my story will not change, and so on and so forth. So for episode 3, I'm going to actually read the demand letter with the narrative that goes into more detail than the press release which I released a few weeks back. And again, you have to forgive me, I have to beb out the names with respect to the individuals that were named as defendants in the lawsuit, just so I ensure that they don't have the ability to report my video for privacy issues and forcing me to take down the podcast and or video on YouTube. So, without further ado, I'm going to read the narrative from the demand letter that we sent back in November. So here we go. Mr Osman is a member of four protected classes. First, he is a Muslim male who hails from Afghanistan. As an Afghani, he is an ethnic minority. As a Muslim, he is a religious minority. Mr Osman is over 40. Yes, I am 41 years old. And finally, most important, most pertinent to this case, mr Osman is a gay male who is actually outed as a result of interactions with your client and your client's employees. Mr Osman, hired as a vice president at Evolve24, a KGMP Strategies company at the Herndon location, began working for your client in September 2022. He received good reviews in December.

Speaker 1:

In January, an employee who reported to Mr Osman asked around about Mr Osman with the intent of determining whether Mr Osman was gay. At that time, mr Osman had not come out, as it were. He took what was then an assumption and ran with it. He assumed Mr Osman was gay. Then he took that information and, as a heterosexual white male, brought fear-driven accusations against Mr Osman. A former member of the military suddenly took offense at comments made by Mr Osman that by no means should have incited offense. A vague social invite turned into an alleged form of sexual harassment. Appropriate mentoring was used as a pretext for bringing a baseless complaint against Mr Osman. To put it another way, a white, heterosexual male when he discovered that his boss was gay, was frightened. Fueled by that fear and bigotry, he used sexual harassment as a pretext to report Mr Osman to Mr Osman's superiors and HR. Had Mr Osman been a native-born American from a Christian family and had Mr Osman presented as a straight male, he would have not taken offense or reported Mr Osman for alleged harassment. He made this report to HR on January 27, 2023.

Speaker 1:

Now, just to stop here for a moment in my 16-17 year career, in all the organizations that I worked for, I've never come out officially. I've maybe told probably at most five individuals over that 16 years span for each of the positions that I've had, and the only reason for that being is that me being Afghan, I don't really talk about my dating life. It's taboo and I grew up in a household that was like that. My dating life, nor my sex life, is not anybody's business. Also, for the fact that over the last 16 years, I haven't really dated much, we'll just leave it at that. Well, actually, no, I won't leave it at that. I say that I haven't dated much only because I was focusing on myself, my career, getting my education. I'm a PhD candidate at George Mason University. I'm trying to finish up my dissertation, which has been shaking now because of this situation but everyone's sex life or dating life is nobody's business and because I never really came out.

Speaker 1:

Just because I present as a gay male with some certain stereotypes. You know I have a hint of gay voice. I use my hands a lot to talk and I dress pretty well and I look pretty good. I think I'm a decent looking guy. Just because I present myself in a certain way. Nobody has the right to make that assumption. If they know for a fact that I'm gay, hey, I mean that's on them. But nobody will be able to find a post, a public post, outside of my friend group that described me from my mouth saying that I'm gay. Most of my private social media are private. I doubt the people that I work with know my friends. I keep my work life and my close knit friend group pretty separate, but I think it's very, very important to engage with people that you work with and that work for you and work above you as someone who is being themselves. I think that's very, very important because you can be in any position, but you have a personality and you are a human being first and foremost. Everything else is just minor detail and I treat everybody the same. I can't say for my former employer the same thing, as will the evidence that I intend on sharing in the future will show.

Speaker 1:

So, to continue, on On February 7th 2023, and from HR communicated the nature of the complaint which arose out of alleged sexual harassment of on the same date, wrote a letter to Mr Osmond and which she reported that would be transitioned to another supervisor and further communications with HR personnel. Ms and Ms Mr Osmond did advise of his sexual orientation. Let me stop here for a bit. So, essentially, what was going on is that everything was verbal. You know, they scheduled a meeting with me and everything was verbal and she was going the list of the supposed violations right and based on that verbal list, it was a clear indication of unconscious bias towards me, especially because I'm gay. It was quite evident. I'm smart enough to know where I prefer to have everything in writing. So I wanted to see what they were going to write up and I stopped her after like the fifth supposed violation and as she was going on and she was telling me that he would be transitioned to another group, she wrote a, actually commented on the shocked look on my face. I just didn't know what to say. But I essentially kept my mouth shut. Let them say what they had to say and then we would proceed accordingly. So I'll continue.

Speaker 1:

What followed this forced self outing is textbook wrongful termination. Mr Osmond sought more clarification from Mr Osmond. Beginning on February 8th 2023. Mr Osmond raised the specter of discrimination. Mr Osmond asked for more direction regarding and was told that would now report to another supervisor. On February 10th 2023, mr Osmond, attempting to comply with company directives to omit from Mr Osmond's report, sent an email in which he followed standard operating procedure by updating the entire team at Evolve 24 regarding regarding his subgroups work status. Mr Osmond omitted from this email because had been moved to another team.

Speaker 1:

Now let me stop here for a bit. When they say I admitted, that means I did include him in the email, like I sent it to the entire Evolve 24 company. However, I did not mention by name in the email for various reasons and evidence will show that, which which I do have. But that's the reason why I omitted his name, because anything that I say it felt like can be perceived as sexual harassment or it could be used against me. So I thought the safest thing to do was just not mention him, and it was. You know, this February 10th was the second Friday of of of the month of February, and there is an email out there that says I'll be sending my updates on the second Friday of every month because other leaders in the group were to send their own respective emails. So with respect to that, I was following what I felt was right. But also, you know, I was the VP of data science, so I reported on on data science tasks and, for certain reasons pertaining to this initial complaint, as well as evidence that I do have, I just simply omitted, I did not mention him in the email, and that's what is met by omitting. If I didn't send him an email, that could have been considered termination, but luckily not. It could have been considered me doing something wrong, or or what have you because he is part of Evolve 24. He just wasn't part of my group anymore. So that's why I did what I did, so I'll continue on. Here's where it truly. Here's where it gets truly weird.

Speaker 1:

On February 10th and brought Mr Osman in to deliver a formal written warning. No dates were included with this warning, which vaguely reports of alleged bad conduct that occurred prior to December. The incidents reported included conversations taken out of context, exaggerated and themselves a clear source of unconscious bias towards gay men. The only reason these pre December items were raised as a concern on February 10th was in reaction to the outing of Mr Osman, which resulted in the biased reaction by HR. Mr Osman, since Mr 10th reassignment, has avoided, has avoided further contact. Mr Osmond went so far as to avoid even mentioning name in the team report. So I touched on that a bit previously.

Speaker 1:

On February 17th and KGNP chief people officer met with Mr Osman and terminated his employment, effective immediately. He was the CEO of Evolve24 and my boss, the reason Ms KGNP provided. She claimed that Mr Osman retaliated against by failing to mention her name in the team report. This makes no sense unless the animus for terminating Mr Osman overrides the pretextual and illogical termination of Mr Osman. It would make no sense for Mr Osman to include b**** in a team report after the removal of b**** from Mr Osman's team. Moreover, and demonstrative of the bias against the gay Mr Osman, other supervisors, like b**** and b****, sent team reports that omit employees from mention without being disciplined, much less terminated.

Speaker 1:

So this is where I've been educating myself and talking with lawyers throughout the past year and there is a difference between unfair termination and wrongful termination. Wrongful termination is when you can find examples of disparate treatment from protected classes. Of course, we have human rights laws at the federal and various states that prevent you from treating people differently or or disciplining them differently, based on protected classes. Sexual orientation, more recently from the Supreme Court ruling I think it was in 2020 or 2021, that prevents sexual orientation from being used and now being classified as a protected class, because you can't have sexual orientation without sex discrimination. That was kind of like the gist. So when you use your unconscious biases to make these assumptions about a certain characteristic of a protected class, that's where it becomes illegal. That's where it violates human rights laws, and this example of disparate treatment is a clear piece of evidence for that. One of the guys he never sent updates regarding his updates because he was by himself until he joined his team, but the other individual b****, he did send at least one update and, to my recollection and evidence will show that he didn't mention everybody's names who were on other teams. So there is that sort of divider and differentiator between my discipline and theirs. So I'll continue on the last paragraph. The absence of a sincere and nondiscriminatory reason for both warning and then terminating Mr Osmond gives rise to a strong claim under the Virginia Human Rights Act. Never had a problem with Mr Osmond until office gossip led to out Mr Osmond. Discriminatory animus gave rise to pretextual complaints about Mr Osmond and that in turn led your client to search for any reason to terminate Mr Osmond's employment.

Speaker 1:

But now just to give you an additional piece of background, I've always separated from my previous employers on good terms, like if I put in my notice, or I quit, or it's because I wanted to. There was one instance a long time ago where it was a small startup and it was like only few people in the organization. I was junior, I was just starting my career. They only wanted senior people there, so I was let go and was given a severance package and they gave me good reviews for future positions and were references at that time. Before this job I again mentioned, I was a vice president at Evolve24. I was the vice president of data science at Evolve24, which was a position I was clearly qualified for if you saw my resume. But I left a previous position where I was a director of data science and they actually were going to promote me to VP of innovation. They wanted me to, they wanted to keep me and I decided to take that risk, which is stupid now that I look back at it, because I couldn't imagine that this would happen. But it was a risk that I took because I wanted to deal with all types of different data sets and do some good with government money. The company that I'm suing is a government, is a large government contracting firm and they make millions off of taxpayer money and I thought it would be good to you know, at least in my case, put that taxpayer money into good use. I thought I would be doing that and doing great things. However, this is not the case.

Speaker 1:

In any event, with respect to KJMP strategies and their sub-companies, mbm Inc, case Company, the Providencia Group and Evolve24, I will, in future episodes, read through the articles that are available, consolidate all of that information together, as well as cite my sources. I believe it's important to give credit where credit is due. I'll also bring up the case that's going on in Texas that is currently public record. I found this online yesterday and I think I'll read through that complaint and proceed from there what I'll also do. I mean, it depends on if my attorney will allow me to, but I think it's important to talk about the various delay tactics that opposing counsel is using. I'll get into more detail with that. They're playing games. These are games that lawyers play.

Speaker 1:

If you know me, I don't play games. I'm direct, honest to the point. I kind of function like a German train schedule On time, on point, meet my deadlines, prioritize accordingly and continue on with my story. That will never change Again. In the previous video, which again I'll link up onto this video or at least link it in the podcast notes, I'll essentially go into more detail about the individuals, if I can. I'll also ensure that my story gets to whomever needs to hear about it.

Speaker 1:

We are going public. Of course, as mentioned in the previous video, it was a process for me to go public with this information only because of my Afghan heritage and my family reputation. My family has everything to lose, more than me, but I at least got the permission of my parents to go public with this because, again, as I mentioned in the previous video, my personal integrity and honor is the utmost important. I'm still fairly young, I still have a career ahead of me and thankfully my parents say you know, just go for it. You know, if our family, if our immediate family's names get tarnished, then you know, so be it. But we don't really deal too much with certain family members anyway, and they probably already know because, again, I present as a gay male and am not married, so not married by choice, and that's another story in which I'll tell another time. In any event, I'm going to continue pushing on, I'm going to.

Speaker 1:

I have a whole bunch of sheets of paper with respect to my complaint, with respect to various articles that have been posted publicly about KGMP strategies, including MVM Inc Case Company, the Providencia Group and Evolve 24. And I'll continue on reading those and as long as it takes probably until I die of old age or unless something happens to me earlier hope that doesn't happen I'll keep on following up with these organizations, seeing what new organizations they create and pop up, because again, this goes to their leadership. Their leadership is nepotism is a thing there, so, so leadership there is very, very close knit and some of the individuals that I named specifically in the lawsuit and as individual defendants have been with MVM Inc for a long time prior to their transition to KGMP strategies. When I lay out the timeline and when I hopefully start will start working again soon, I'll be able to clearly display that timeline and you know I my videography skills are very, very limited right now. I do decent editing, but my videography skills are very, very limited and I wanted to create an animation of certain aspects of the timeline and it will show the linearity as to the progression of various events within the organization. They'll probably try to claim that you know I was only an employee of Evolve 24 and not KGMP strategies and it's something that they'll probably write in their response. I don't think that will matter because my boss, who was the CEO Evolve 24, was also the executive vice president of KGMP strategies and two people who worked in the sister organizations within KGMP strategies were involved in the calls and have been named as individual defendants in the lawsuit, as well as one other individual who who works for another sister organization in the organization in KGMP strategies case companies specifically, but also the fact that I was dealing and contributing to all the system excuse me, all the sister organizations with respect to my work and providing resources and so on. So for them to come up with that argument it's. It's. Let them try. I don't think it will work and I think it's very, very important to for me to specify all the sister organizations that are involved as well as, after my lawsuit is complete, continue on following up with that organization as well as those specific individuals and and and seeing what's going on with that. Sorry about that because I'm getting text messages, but, in any event, I know this has been long. I'll stop it right here, but I hope all of you will watch this video, subscribe, comment, follow Again.

Speaker 1:

You know we in the beginning I mentioned the terms homophobia and transphobia and fat phobia. I mean these term, anything fill in the blank. Phobia is being thrown around all the time just because people disagree with you, but I think I presented a legitimate case and narrative that perfectly describes homophobia, to the point where it violates human rights laws that are currently in place. So without, I think as a, as individuals, we need to be careful about just aimlessly throwing around those words filled with the Blake phobia, what have you? Not only because people disagree with you. I think when people are just throwing these words around, it desensitizes. I think that's the right word. You have to forgive me, my vocabulary is very poor, but it makes people less sensitive to the actual legitimate discrimination claims that are being put forth in various lawsuits all across the country in the United States. So I think people need to be careful about when they throw these terms around. Including Well, I won't get into including, I'll say that for another video but I think we're in a climate now that's very volatile and I think we need to use our words, words wisely and just be considerate of that. I'll post the various links.

Speaker 1:

With respect to the new podcast for the Asmari project, as you know, asmari is a men's brand. You know I found it in 2018 and you know it's public that I'm the owner. You know I've done various interviews and I think, because certain people found out about my brand, that you know this potentially adds to the issue of homophobia, but I never publicly stated that I was a homosexual. Another thing that I'll say is that we need we need to keep on pushing. We need more people who are brave to call out the bullshit excuse me, the bull crap that that's going on and just keep on pushing forward and in complaining when necessary. Again, I'll post the links to the new podcast, the Asmari project. I'll get, I'll go back to. I'll go back to interviewing athletes, models and and have various collaborations with various male athletes.

Speaker 1:

But I think also I do have to share this, share my story as to what's going on, because it's actually preventing me from getting some patents out there, trade marks because you know those cost money and I don't have an income right now. But just, I hope you all can share my story. I'll be happy to answer any questions that I can, that I'm allowed to with my attorney's permission. I intend on going to various news outlets or various press mediums with respect to my case, because you know, it's one year as of today where I was wrongfully terminated, suffering to a point, but not not too bad. It's a, it's something that's it's an unnecessary weight on my shoulders. That's happening every day and this is quite therapeutic for me, so I can still have a smile on my face. So you know that's good.

Speaker 1:

I'll post the links to all my socials, including the SMARI project, the SMARI brand, and look out for the various stories that I plan on reading that are available online, where I'll site the sources, but also look for the fun content too.

Speaker 1:

I have some nice guys that are lined up I'm actually going to speak with one either today or tomorrow, you know, just a preliminary phone call and get some things going and have some fun stuff out there in the meantime. And I thank you all for your time. I thank you all for your support and I hope that this will help people make the right decisions and to watch out for toxic organizations and to research them accordingly. I think if an organization has multiple allegations against them and have had multiple settlements against them and have continuously shown their story changing, I think it's an issue and I think us, as US taxpayers, need to know where our money is going and making sure that it goes to the appropriate organizations when it comes to US government endeavors and projects and so on. Again, thank you for your support and thank you for listening and I'll see you on the next one. Cheers.