Her mother spent part of her childhood in foster care and attempted to overdose on anxiety medication when Glasson was in the third grade.
She was an intern for Maria Cantwell, a United States Senator, and worked as a public policy analyst for the Nevada Legislature.
[6] During a project she was leading at that time, she was tasked with designing a promotional website, prompting her to enroll in graduate school to change careers.
[7][13] Glasson joined Google in Mountain View, California in 2014 as a user researcher, and was promoted several times into management.
[1][14][16][22] Glasson refused to sign it, and stayed at the company until she voluntarily left in August 2019,[23] after she says she was given a poor performance review during her second maternity leave.
[14] She said the performance review came after a "shallow" investigation into some of her discrimination claims, which ultimately resulted in Google finding no policy violations.
She said that, after her own experiences, she believes that human resources teams directing employees to mental health counselors is "meant to stop you in your tracks and silence you", and to communicate that "you're the problem".
[24] In February 2020, Glasson wrote a Medium article alleging that in 2014 she was sexually harassed in a team off-site in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, by a company leader.
[25] She has criticized Google for attempting to "tarnish the reputation" of people who speak out, instead of offering real support and fixing problems.
[14] In October 2020, Facebook employees spoke out in response to COVID-19 pandemic policies they alleged unfairly benefited workers with children.
In response, Glasson wrote a Medium article asking for childless employees to empathize with the struggles their parenting colleagues face, highlighting her own need to take emergency leave when her childcare provider was closed due to the pandemic.
[23][5] In 2021, Glasson contributed to The Tech Worker Handbook, a website of free resources for employees who may be interested in speaking out on issues at their employers.
[6] Glasson filed a complaint against Google with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for pregnancy discrimination on September 3, 2019.
[14] In the lawsuit, and her complaints, Glasson alleged that she was told by third parties that her manager was making derogatory comments about her, interfered with her projects, and started interviewing others to replace her.
After receiving what she described as unfair and surprising negative feedback, she accepted a demotion on another team, where she alleged she was discouraged from supervisory duties prior to her maternity leave, as it would "rock the boat", and was excluded from manager meetings and off-sites.
[32] Glasson sent another demand letter to Google requesting the company work with the Center for Parental Leave Leadership to train managers at the company on supporting new and expecting parents to prevent others from facing the same types of discrimination and retaliation that she alleges she faced,[25] and asking for payment for emotional damages and reimbursement for her legal expenses.
She also said that because she is suing for emotional damages, Google received all of the notes from the counseling she was provided by the company's EAP, including private information about her marriage and sex life.
[24] Kristi Lee, an associate professor at Seattle University, said this sounded like "client abandonment", a violation of a formal ethical code for counselors.
[40] Glasson later wrote a book about her experiences, titled Black Box: A Pregnancy Discrimination Memoir, which was published in September 2023.
[41][42] In 2020, Glasson worked with Senator Karen Keiser in the hopes of extending the statute of limitations for reporting pregnancy discrimination.
[43] The bill passed in both the senate and in the house in March 2020,[44] and was later signed into law, extending the time pregnant workers have to file a complaint to one year.
[46] In October 2021, Glasson said she was inspired by Ifeoma Ozoma's work on California State Legislature's 2021 Silenced No More Act, which made it illegal for companies to use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) preventing employees from speaking about unlawful conduct such as discrimination and harassment.
[49] Glasson testified that she was "intimidated" by the NDA she had signed when she joined the company, and by the terminology "Google confidential information", leading her to question whether or not she could speak to attorneys and government agencies about her experiences.