How to Defend Yourself After Someone Tries to Take Credit For Your Work
We’ve all been there. Lets say you’re working on a project and you’re in charge of making a new appointment page for an app. You work hard all week, and finally you finish and are ready to show it to the group. At your next meeting, one of your teammates chimes in and says, “Yeah I worked really hard on this page so I hope you all like it.”
Wait.….what?! You know that your teammate didn’t work on your appointment page at all, much less finish their own work and they’re trying to take credit for your work?
Sometimes it’s difficult to stand up for yourself in these situations. Maybe you don’t want to cause conflict, or think it’s okay to let it slide this once. But it’s important to stand up for yourself and be properly credited for your hard work. It’s not okay to let people walk over you and trust me, if you let it slide once - they’ll just do it again and again - if not to you, to someone else and that’s not acceptable.
Recently, I experienced someone else trying to take credit for my hard work and I wanted to share how I dealt with this experience. This happened to me back in June but I wanted to give myself some time and space before writing this blog post and sharing my insights and tips with you all. My hope is that in sharing my experience with someone stealing credit for my work will help you better protect yourselves from this happening to you. Or, if you have experienced something similar - I hope you can find comfort in knowing that you are not alone and this happens more frequently than anyone expects. After this happened to me, I started to notice more stories of this happening to my IG and IRL friends. Okay, let’s get started.
Here’s My Story.
TLDR: “Karen” (pseudonym) was a girl I mentored and I asked to replace me as President after I was Founder and President of WICS @ St Andrews for over a year. She tried to steal credit for Founding WICS, said she designed the society’s logo (which I made), said she brought in corporate sponsors (that I acquired), has repeatedly lied on her LinkedIn about winning society awards, and tried to wipe out my presidency and say she founded the entire society.
As I’m sure most of you who follow me know, I’m a huge advocate for women in tech and after experiencing some sexism at my University, I solely founded a Women in Computer Science society (WICS) for short. I was Founder and President of WICS for just over a year - from January 2018-February 2019. During this time I created the logo & all event graphics, grew the society to 100+ members, fought to get the society affiliated with the Student Union, and brought in major corporate sponsors from Google, JP Morgan, Bloomberg, and Softwire!
Setting up the society in itself was not easy. The Student Union told me they didn’t understand the need for a separate “WOMEN in CS” society, since there was already a computing society. For months before January 2018, I emailed back and forth and even had to get permission from the existing computing society to found WICS. This experience was disappointing, I assumed that a prominent University such as St Andrews would be excited to promote women in technology but instead I had to fight for months to even get approval to found the society. Overall, I’m very proud of everything I accomplished during my time as Founder and President. It was a ton of work setting up the society and convincing people to join, but founding WICS at St Andrews and creating this community is something I’m extremely proud of. Below is an article that was written about me - I was interviewed by The Saint student newspaper about my founding of WICS at St Andrews.
In June 2020, a friend and board member I hired myself tried to steal credit for founding of the society, my logo design, and sponsorships I brought in. I had mentored and I specifically had hired “Karen” onto the board. I trusted her, and she was my friend so naturally I felt angry, betrayed, etc. I hired Karen to take my place after I stepped down from my role as Founder and President, since I wanted to focus on my studies and encourage turnover in positions so new people and new ideas could come through. This was someone who literally messaged me when I asked her to be president, “you are our fearless leader though! this club was literally all bc of you!” and then tried to steal credit for my founding of WICS.
For the sake of the rest of this article, I’m going to use a pseudonym for the girl who stole credit for my work and is the former president of WICS at St Andrews - we’ll call her Karen. The funny thing is Karen tried to steal credit of founding WICS…but she wasn’t even part of the board when it was founded. I officially founded WICS an entire month (Jan 2018) before she joined and I filed paperwork months before that. Now that I’ve had some distance I can laugh about how ridiculous it is - especially since I’ve been interviewed about founding it, have all the original paperwork and bank setup forms, emails to company sponsors, etc. - but in the moment I was in utter disbelief of how someone could lie through their teeth about all of this, especially a former friend and mentee.
I messaged Karen immediately when I noticed this false information all over her LinkedIn, and asked her to please take it down since it was completely false and misleading. She replied within hours, and told me she would get back to me and then . . . . proceeded to ghost for an entire month, not take any of the information down, and send an email blast to the whole WICS mailing list that she was Founder right before she left. 😱 She lied about creating the club, lied about designing the society logo (which I made before she even joined!), and lied about acquiring sponsorships from Bloomberg, JP Morgan, Google, and Softwire which I brought in.
Karen’s LinkedIn - dates are also falsified, she joined in February 2018 not January
In my case, Karen was spreading these lies over LinkedIn. So, I reached out to LinkedIn and gave them all the evidence I have which is a LOT because I founded the society so I have a ton of paperwork & proof. They agreed that she was straight up lying, so they removed the “Founder” from her LinkedIn, and made her change the date because she wasn’t even hired onto the board until February 2018 and she was putting January 2018 on her LinkedIn. So LinkedIn removes the false information, and all is well. Except that the next day, Karen puts up the exact same info. I went through the process 3 more times of giving LinkedIn all my concrete evidence, and LinkedIn removing it. On the 4th time - Karen offered up some proof of her 'supposed foundership of the society’. Guess what that proof was? Remember that email I mentioned that Karen sent out to the entire WICS mailing list right after I contacted her about taking the false information down? Bingo. She literally took that email as evidence and gave it to LinkedIn - and despite the fact I have over 10 pieces of evidence supporting my claim, they refused to take down the false info after that. So now, her LinkedIn still says ‘Founder’ even though I’ve contacted them multiple times and even taken legal action. Needless to say, I’ve lost some faith in LinkedIn as a platform because they won’t take down blatantly false info.
I also reported Karen to my University board for plagiarism and non-academic misconduct. In typical University fashion, they drew out the process, waited for 2 months (from when I first reported) until I graduated to tell me that Karen had graduated and therefore they could take no action. Turns out she ended up only completing a 3-year degree - meaning she has a General degree without a major - and so she graduated the same year as me. They told me they had emailed her suggesting she should remove the word “Founder” and stop taking credit for my work. And we all know….people always follow strongly worded suggestions!! Not. I will say, the one thing the Student Union did (not even affiliated with the University) is they revoked a society award she had won “Exceptional Individual Contribution” - I’m guessing because she lied on the application form and said she founded WICS when she didn’t. But guess what - it still says she won the award on her LinkedIn because LinkedIn refuses to remove false information!
*Update: 12/15 - After repeated reports to LinkedIn, there is some victory to be had because her LinkedIn bio now says “President at WICS” and she’s removed Founder from her title. Persistence pays off!
The point that’s really disappointing out of all of this is that, and I will openly admit it, Karen was a good President for the society. She did some good things: improved the social media, got more people involved, etc. but that wasn’t enough for her. She was greedy and decided to steal credit for my work, instead of just being happy with what she accomplished.
What the Facebook looks like now - my name has been removed.
What the Facebook used to look like - with my name and the founding date
I created the website for WICS and I thought it would be great to have each committee’s names & dates they were part of the society on the website. So for each committee, I put the names & dates each person was a part of the committee. Naturally, I also put my name on the website as Founder of the society with the founding date. After I handed off the website to Karen, she deleted all that information and removed my name as Founder. So make sure you still have access to your accounts in case something goes wrong! Even on the WICS Facebook, it said “Founded in January 2018 by Ashley Llewellyn” and they deleted that. I’m honestly so disappointed that this society I created has become this toxic and bad that whoever now controls the social media has tried to delete all my information. I’m guessing Karen still has access and has been the one doing this, but it could be anyone. There are other members of the WICS committee who also lied for her, so I don’t have much faith in the society as a whole anymore which is disappointing since I founded it.
In the end, I hired a lawyer to send a demand/cease and desist letter to Karen. It laid out all of the damages, including copyright + trademark violation (for the logo) and defamation (“the oral or written communication of a false statement about another that unjustly harms their reputation and usually constitutes a tort or crime” - from Wikipedia). I am still considering pressing charges at this time, in either civil court or small claims court where you can get up to $5,000 in damages.
This whole ordeal went on for months, and by the end I was exhausted mentally and emotionally from having to constantly defend myself and my accomplishments, email back and forth with LinkedIn and the University, etc. However, in the end I’m still glad I did all of it. I have found peace with the whole situation, and writing this blog post, putting up the YT video, and recording the podcast episode with my sister have all been incredibly cathartic. I am able to find peace with this situation, knowing that I properly defended myself and reached some form of justice. And I believe Karen will think twice now before she tries to unjustly steal credit for other people’s work.
1. What To Do Someone Steals Credit For Your Work
1. Contact the person directly - There’s a chance that the person made a mistake and accidentally took credit for your work (albeit a slim one). In any case, it’s best to contact the person who’s stealing credit for your work and ask them to properly credit you. If you’re lucky, they will apologize and the issue will be solved.
2. Report them - Whether it’s to your University’s ethics board, an HR rep, or someone else - make sure you report the behavior through the appropriate channels if it’s a severe violation and damages your reputation. If it’s a less severe violation, you might not get far through these channels but if you still feel unresolved you should definitely try.
3. Get a lawyer - If worst comes to worst and the person refuses to stop stealing credit for your work - get a lawyer to send a cease & desist / demand letter. It’ll cost some money, but in the long run it’s worth it because it shows that you’re serious about the intellectual property violation & in my case the copyright & trademark violation. If you want you can also go to small claims court where you can sue for up to $5,000 of damages. I’m honestly still considering this because of the insurmountable evidence I have against Karen but I’m still deciding.
From my IG stories, I asked you all “Has someone ever tried to take credit for your work (can be small or large)?” - 67% of you said yes. Following that I asked, “If you’re a woman (or identify with the term) - has another woman ever stolen credit for your work?” and 42% of you said yes. That’s insane, almost half of you have had a fellow woman steal credit for your work. It’s something to bring attention to, we don’t get to the top by putting each other down - we get there by raising each other up.
A very appropriate quote from Lucifer S2:E4 on Netflix
As my good friend Kathryn told me girls support girls, they don’t double-cross them. We already have so much stacked against us as women in tech - do we really need to be backstabbing each other? (Answer: absolutely not!!!!) Women who tear down other women to get to the top are NOT feminists and are NOT committed to promoting women in tech. You can’t preach about promoting women in tech, and then climb on other women’s backs to get to where you are. Men already try and steal credit for our work, and now we have to look out for women who are doing it too? It’s honestly disgusting. I saw an Instagram post from OwnTrail (an amazing alternative to LinkedIn btw!) and the caption read:
"It’s all about raising while we rise.” - OwnTrail
I absolutely love that sentiment. It’s not just about some women getting in tech, it’s about ALL women. It’s about promoting and encouraging ALL WOMEN, not tearing each other down. In my case in particular, it was incredibly disappointing that Karen, who I thought was a friend and someone I mentored, did this to me. However, I learned some very important lessons which I want to share with you all so you can avoid things like this happening to you.
I also want to say a quick thank you here to all of my friends and family who supported me through this, to people who I worked with when I first founded WICS who offered to write statements in case I needed them in court, etc. I appreciate your continued support so much, and will never forget it.
2. Lessons Learned
Choose your team VERY wisely - I’ll admit, there were some warning signs. One time I asked Karen to email an important company about an event we were doing, and she told me she’d already done it. Then I got an email from the company sponsor asking about the event and when I went back through the WICS emails - I saw Karen hadn’t sent the email. When I confronted her, she admitted she lied about sending the email. These are warning signs ⚠️⚠️⚠️. Make sure you hire people onto your team that you trust and are good, hardworking people. This will help you weed out some of the bad people who will try and take advantage of you and the situation.
Post publicly about your accomplishments! I am not the type of person to brag about myself. However, in this digital age - you need to do it to some degree! Start a tech Instagram, find your community, and share your wins. If nothing else, it helps you visualize all your accomplishments & feel proud of what you have achieved. It’s also very valuable because there’s evidence of what you’ve achieved and others can’t try and steal credit for your work. For example, I got interviewed by St Andrews newspaper, The Saint about my founding WICS which was both great press for me and for the society!
If you are Founder of a society/company, keep access to your website, FB, etc. It might sound a little paranoid but it’s smart to keep access to certain parts of your website, FB, etc. if you founded a society or company. You should always have primary admin access and be sure that no one else can kick you off whenever they want to.
If you’re experiencing this yourself, just remember that none of this is your fault. It’s easy to tell yourself “I should have known they weren’t a good person,” etc. but when it comes down to it - it’s their fault and their actions to blame, not you.
Finally, I want to talk about the future. Writing this blog post, recording a podcast episode with my sister, and sharing my story has been incredibly cathartic. Despite how awful this experience has been, I have learned a lot and I’ve made my peace with it. Karen can lie on the internet all she wants, but the truth is that I am the sole Founder of Women in CS at St Andrews. I have pages and pages of evidence, screenshots of messages of when I first hired her (a month after I founded the society), messages where Karen told me herself that I founded the society (back before all this happened). Friends volunteered to give statements because I talked them when I was founding the society and was trying to convince 25 people to join so I could get WICS affiliated with the Student Union at St Andrews. I am the Founder of WICS and I accomplished great things while I was Founder and President, there is no doubt about it, no matter what she chooses to post online.
Not to get too braggy here, but I know how great I am. I am passionate about advocating for women in tech and diversity in STEM, I am hard-working, and being Founder of WICS at St Andrews is not the greatest thing I’ve accomplished so far. My greatest achievements are ahead of me. I know that I will accomplish amazing things in the future, so I can move on from this - knowing what I create today, tomorrow, next week will be amazing. I find comfort in the fact that I’ve found a strong community of supportive, encouraging, AMAZING women in tech on Instagram and that I have removed negative people like Karen from my life. There will always be bad people out there - people trying to steal credit for your work because they can’t think of anything original on their own, and people who are greedy and want to take from other people and claim it as their own. But you can’t let it get you down.
