Who are our role models?

As a program supervisor, a large portion of my responsibilities required me to hire and train new staff.

I’d tell new hires: “The kids are always watching and listening. Be mindful of your language, behavior and actions. You are the role model.”

A vast majority of the adults I worked with and with whom I shared responsibilities with were exceptional, had genuine love for young people, and served as excellent role models.

This brings me to the Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley. The Boys and Girls Club of America is a national organization that has an extensive history of youth development work and operates youth centers and after-school programs across the country. I have a great deal of respect for the work they do for young people.

I was a bit surprised, then, to learn that the current CEO of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Boys and Girls Club, Steve Wymer, was implicated in wrongdoing while at his last job.

A nationally syndicated news show – 60 Minutes – detailed allegations that Wymer, while CEO of eBay, orchestrated a cyberstalking campaign against an elderly Massachusetts couple who blogged unflattering things about eBay, Wymer’s job performance and his salary.

These efforts, Massachusetts prosecutors allege, included dispatching an eBay security team to the couple’s home in New England that spent days surveilling them, directed veiled threats via social media toward the couple, and sent them a number of menacing items in the mail including a pig’s mask.

The couple was terrified and contacted the police. Charges were filed. Most of the eBay team that was involved was prosecuted. Wymer, for reasons that remain baffling, escaped prosecution. A civil suit is making its way through the courts.

Amid this controversy, and maybe because of it, Wymer lost his job at eBay and is now, astonishingly, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley.

Wait. What?

Read that last part again. Yes, an organization that has spent decades serving young people and has a national presence made its way clear to hire someone who was implicated in federal wrongdoing and is named in a civil suit filed by the couple in Massachusetts. I reached out to Wymer for comment but did not hear back.

If I was working at BGCSV and in a leadership position, I’d be worried about the message we would be sending to the kids as an organization. I’d have to hold meetings with the line staff at the BGCSV — those who work directly with the kids on a daily basis — to discuss and process their CEO’s alleged wrongdoing.

I’d imagine it would go something like this: What do we tell the kids when they ask? How do we explain that some people got arrested but he did not? Why would anyone send a pig mask in the mail? What is that even supposed to mean? Are we supposed to genuinely respect him or just pretend that we do? If our CEO is not a good role model, who is and where do we find them?

I loved my time working with young people. It is indeed a privilege to serve in that capacity and I poured my heart into it. An essential part of this work is holding oneself accountable to the kids you serve. Your words and actions as an adult matter. Once you lose the trust of young people, you can never truly get it back.

Announcing his hire in 2020, the BGCSV said Wymer will serve as the organization’s “primary ambassador.”

To the board that hired Wymer in 2020, I am going to offer you the advice I gave new staff when I hired them: “The kids are always watching and listening. Be mindful of your language, behavior and actions. You are the role model.” Please do better. Voting to unanimously hire Wymer, despite knowing about these allegations, retaining him, and then publicly defending him sends all the wrong messages to the young people that show up at your facilities every day.

Marco Durazo lives in San Bruno and is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.