
SoulCycles favorite instructors accused of sexual impropriety, discrimination – Business Insider

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Some of SoulCycle’s top instructors have been accused of behavior that includes discriminating against a pregnant woman, fat-shaming employees, using homophobic and racist language, and sleeping with riders.
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Insiders said a top instructor, Conor Kelly, texted nude pictures of himself to riders and had his hours reduced at a Connecticut studio.
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On several occasions a popular instructor in New York, Laurie Cole, threatened not to teach if the front-desk staff wasn’t in good enough physical shape, a former manager said.
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Numerous people said SoulCycle didn’t discipline or fire misbehaving instructors because they were moneymakers, and instead lavished them with perks like Soho House memberships and, in one case, a loaner Mercedes-Benz.
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A SoulCycle spokesperson told Business Insider: “When we receive complaints or allegations related to behavior within our community that does not align to our values, we take those very seriously and both investigate and address them.”
In August 2014, Jennifer Brody was working as a studio manager at California’s Palo Alto SoulCycle when she met Conor Kelly, a “master instructor” with SoulCycle. Kelly was in town from the East Coast to teach a class.
After riding in his class, Brody, who is a Black woman, said she changed out of her workout clothes and put a bandana on her head. When she passed Kelly in the studio, she said, he laughed and said “Whoa — Aunt Jemima!” in an apparent reference to the syrup and pancake brand.
“That he felt OK calling me ‘Aunt Jemima’ in the middle of a studio lobby in Palo Alto was disgusting,” Brody recently told Business Insider. Brody said she told a couple of instructors of color about Kelly’s remark, but she didn’t officially report it because, she believed, “There wasn’t anyone who would have cared.”
“SoulCycle kind of turned the cheek on a lot of stuff as long as they were making money,” Brody added.
SoulCycle instructors were fawned over by riders and the company’s top brass, but insiders said inappropriate behavior became more commonplace as SoulCycle’s cult following grew.
While top-tier talent was lavished with perks like Soho House memberships and, in one case, a Mercedes-Benz while teaching in the Hamptons, insiders said some of SoulCycle’s most successful instructors discriminated against a pregnant woman, fat-shamed employees, slept with riders, and used homophobic and racist language.
They said there were numerous complaints to SoulCycle headquarters. In one case, a complaint involved an unwanted sexual encounter.
Business Insider spoke with more than 30 SoulCycle insiders — including current and former riders, studio staff, instructors, and corporate employees — many of whom accused SoulCycle of turning a blind eye to egregious behavior because the instructors were too valuable to let go of. None of the instructors mentioned in this article responded to requests for comment.
“The more senior you are as an instructor, the more toxic you are,” one former corporate staffer said.
A SoulCycle spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement: “At SoulCycle, our priority has always been to build a community centered on our core values of diversity, inclusion, acceptance and love. When we receive complaints or allegations related to behavior within our community that does not align to our values, we take those very seriously and both investigate and address them. We are committed to continuing to make improvements and ensuring that we live up to the values that our teams and riders expect of us.”
But with SoulCycle struggling to stay afloat amid the pandemic, at-home cycling competitors like Peloton, and a recent executive exodus, the very star instructors who built the brand may now be one of the company’s biggest liabilities.
‘Well, they better not hire a bunch of twinks to work there’
Laurie Cole is a master instructor with a devout following. In a 2010 New York Times article, one rider compared the difficulty of getting into Cole’s class to scoring a reservation at Momofuku Ko, the Michelin-starred restaurant in New York.
Despite the fanfare, Cole was also met with criticism and accusations of inappropriate behavior toward both staff and clients. Sources said Cole demanded absolute control over which riders filled her coveted front row of bikes, which typically went to the most attractive and fit people in the room.
In the summer of 2019, a pregnant rider sent an email to SoulCycle’s general counsel alleging discrimination after Cole booted her off a reserved front-row bike at the Hamptons studio, two people said.
“She was, like, ‘Oh no, no, no — I need you to come sit here,’ and put her in the back corner and moved a more fit, attractive person in front,” the former corporate staffer said. As far as the staffer knew, Cole was never disciplined.
Some insiders said the front row at SoulCycle was often reserved for the fittest and most attractive riders.
Three people told Business Insider that Cole had “fat-shamed” studio staffers. One former assistant studio manager in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan said that on multiple occasions Cole ordered studio managers to remove certain staffers from their shifts because they weren’t in good enough shape.
“She has taken photos of staffers who were maybe curvy and said, ‘This is not on brand for my check-in. I don’t want this at the front desk during my classes,'” the former manager recalled.
“It’s awful,” this person said.
Another former high-ranking employee said that if Cole’s staffing demands weren’t met, she’d threaten not to teach. “It was so extreme, the level of control that she was trying to have over things,” the employee said.
People also said that Cole used homophobic language at work. In 2017, before a class, Cole and the assistant manager were discussing a new studio that would soon be opening in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. According to the assistant manager, when the conversation turned to the studio’s new manager, who was gay, the assistant manager recalled Cole saying: “Well, they better not hire a bunch of twinks to work there.”
“It was just so shocking to hear,” the manager said. “Because I’m in the queer community, I can understand how messed up that is.” This person said she reported the comment to a corporate staffer who said they would escalate the complaint to human resources. The manager said that, to her knowledge, “Nothing happened.
Jonathan Tisch, Jennifer Fisher, Laurie Cole, and Kelly Ripa at a SoulCycle charity event in New York in 2013.
Leadership at SoulCycle HQ was well aware of complaints about Cole’s behavior, four people said.
On several occasions Cole met with the company’s chief people officer, Adrienne Gemperle, and chief talent officer, Halle Madia. Cole was reprimanded for her behavior, the former high-ranking employee said.
“Laurie would talk about how she needs certain things to make her classes run and how she’s contributing to the business,” the employee said. (This same employee said they were privy to the meeting details.) Gemperle or Madia would tell Cole that she had acted inappropriately.
In more than one instance, Cole’s conduct got her taken off the schedule temporarily, another former longtime senior staffer said. But the behavior didn’t change, the former high-ranking employee said.
Cole wasn’t the only instructor accused of misbehaving. Another popular New York instructor, Janet Fitzgerald, who is SoulCycle’s senior training officer, was known to make lewd comments, particularly to instructors in training, four sources said. Two people said she sometimes referred to riders as “little sluts.”
A longtime New York instructor said Fitzgerald asked her and other candidates about their sexual orientation during their training. The longtime instructor said that the question made her uncomfortable and she found it to be “super bizarre and unnecessary.”
One senior instructor said Fitzgerald was a “nightmare” during training because of her frequent sexual remarks.
“She would say things like ‘Do you want to get f—–?'” the senior instructor said. “And the girl or boy would be like, ‘Uh, what?’ And then she’d be like, ‘You’re never getting f—– if you look like that. Let your hair down. Put some lipstick on or something.'”
The longtime instructor said she didn’t formally complain about Fitzgerald’s behavior because she didn’t want to hurt her chances of becoming an instructor. “There were no repercussions for trainers,” the employee said. “They did whatever they wanted. Ultimately they were making the company more money than you.”
‘Walking into Conor Kelly’s class was like walking into a sex dungeon’
Some behavior was so rampant it became company lore.
With his chiseled abs and sleeve of tattoos, Conor Kelly has amassed 13,700 Instagram followers and cultivated a devoted rider base dubbed the “Conz Crew.” Before the pandemic, his classes — mainly in New York City, nearby Westchester County, and Greenwich, Connecticut — would have waiting lists only seconds after online booking opened.
The atmosphere in his classes was distinctly sexual, several people said.
“Walking into Conor Kelly’s class was like walking into a sex dungeon,” a SoulCycle rider who took one of Kelly’s New York classes said. “It’s all these blondes in the front row with these high ponytails and their boobs out. There was this way about him. He’d reach the whole studio. It’s overwhelming.”
Conor Kelly.