Microsoft's New Chief Diversity Officer Won't Start Until July

(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp.'s new chief diversity officer won't start at her new post until July as part of a settlement of a lawsuit by her former employer, International Business Machines Corp., that equated her hiring to the theft of trade secrets.

IBM on Monday announced the accord less than a month after suing its former chief diversity officer, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre. The case highlighted the expanding role that diversity measures play in corporate America.

IBM-Microsoft Spat Elevates Diversity to Tech-Secret Level

Microsoft said last month that it had hired McIntyre as chief diversity officer after more than two decades at IBM, where she held executive positions including vice president in human resources before being named chief diversity officer and vice president of leadership succession planning in 2015.

IBM sued McIntrye the next day in federal court in New York, seeking to enforce a one-year non-compete agreement and saying she possessed information including confidential data about diversity, strategies and initiatives that could harm the company competitively if she was allowed to go to Microsoft immediately.

McIntyre's attorneys said IBM was seeking a "draconian" court order blocking her from working for an entire year for any company it deemed to be a competitor. U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti then temporarily barred McIntyre from moving to Microsoft.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net.

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