Former senior forum executive Cheryl Martin admitted that the most disappointing thing was to see the distance between what the organization "aspires to and what happens behind the scenes."

Under Klaus Schwab’s decades-long oversight, the World Economic Forum "has allowed to fester an atmosphere" of sexual harassment and discrimination against women and Black people, the World Street Journal has cited numerous sources, including current and former forum employees, as saying.

An array of female staffers described sexual harassment they experienced at the hands of senior managers, some of whom remain at the forum, "a tone that was set at the very top of the organization," according to the WSJ.