Away co-founder will remain CEO, after announcing plans to step aside

Away co-founder Steph Korey will become co-CEO of her company, rather than moving to its board of directors, according to The New York Times. Last month, following a Verge report that described a “toxic work environment” within the company, Away announced that the CEO position would be taken over by Lululemon COO Stuart Haselden, effective today, January 13th, while Korey would become executive chairman of Away’s board. Now, Korey and Haselden will share the CEO position.

Korey tells the Times that Away “let some inaccurate reporting influence the timeline of a transition plan that we had.” (The article does not specify what Korey claims those inaccuracies are.) Haselden was initially supposed to become Away’s COO and later transition to CEO to take the company public. Even once that transition happened, the two were supposed to remain “pretty much in their original roles,” the Times writes. Away now believes that would have led to confusion when it appeared that a board director “who doesn’t work at the company” was trying to work with vendors. According to the report, Korey still plans to fully hand off the CEO role to Haselden eventually.

Away has hired Elizabeth Locke, lead trial counsel for University of Virginia associate dean of students Nicole Eramo, who successfully sued Rolling Stone over its since-retracted article “A Rape on Campus,” according to The New York Times. The Times writes that it is “unclear” whether Away plans to sue.

In a statement given to the Times, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel said, “Steph Korey responding to our reporting by saying her behavior and comments were ‘wrong, plain and simple’ and then choosing to step down as CEO speaks for itself.”

After The Verge’s initial report, Korey tweeted a statement saying, “I’ve made mistakes as we’ve built Away” and said she was working with an executive coach to improve as a leader.