The woman whose complaint sparked the sexual harassment scandal that rocked AMP, Julia Szlakowski, says years before her mistreatment at the financial services firm she was fired from another job for not sleeping with her boss.

AMP's initial decision to promote Boe Pahari to the head of AMP Capital — despite the sexual harassment case against him mounted by Ms Szlakowski in 2017 — caused widespread investor anger and sent its share price tumbling at the time.

Mr Pahari has since announced he is leaving the company. But he had earlier been promoted despite issuing a public apology and having part of his pay docked after settling the sexual harassment case brought by Ms Szlakowski.

In a pre-recoded speech to be delivered via Zoom at the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) conference on Wednesday, US-based Ms Szlakowski, whose family moved as refugees from Poland to America when she was a child, details how she has been the victim of ongoing sexual harassment across workplaces.

The harassment, perpetrated by various male colleagues and/or superiors started when she was a waitress in her college years, continued during a stint with a political consulting firm in Los Angeles some years later, and happened again most recently at AMP, resulting in her leaving the company.

Ms Szlakowski says she had thought that in joining AMP to head up their North American distribution efforts in 2016 she would "be safe, where my personal and professional choices would be supported and respected".

"Everyone now knows how deeply mistaken I was," she says.

'Women allowed men who harassed to not be held accountable'

Ms Szlakowski, now 41, says while men were the harassers, throughout her time at AMP there were women who allowed the harassment to flourish and treat it as though it never happened by demanding that she return to work for her harasser.

"What may come as a surprise is that these individuals were all female."

Ms Szlakowski says when she was hired in 2016, AMP was a top-20 company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), and one-in-four Australians was an AMP customer.

"Since July 1st, 2020, when news of my 2017 sexual harassment complaint broke, AMP shares fell approximately 40 per cent or $2.8 billion in market capitalisation," she says.

"Between last July and March of this year, investors withdrew $9 billion in assets under management from AMP Capital — approximately $2 billion in corporate pension assets and about $8 billion in total wealth management products."

"A number of pension funds withdrew hundreds of millions from AMP's ethical investment options and a $5 billion property fund recently changed ownership.

"Over the past year, dozens upon dozens of talented senior and junior staff have left, not to mention almost every single executive.

'You're not a princess who needs her own room, are you?'

But AMP was not the first workplace where Ms Szlakowski faced sexual harassment.

She says as a college student in the early 2000s she worked double-shifts as a waitress to help fund the costs of studying political theory.

"During this time, I became acclimated to an environment where 'the customer is always right' — drunk men, who regularly made sexually explicit comments at my expense, were treated with deference by male and female managers alike.

She later, in her mid-20s, was offered a role to manage a small party race, on behalf of a political consulting group, during a national convention in Los Angeles.

Upon checking into the hotel, where the event was being held, she discovered a room hadn't been reserved under her name but was reassured by a female superior that she would have a place to stay. 

Late in the evening her boss, a man 30 years her senior, requested she meet him at the hotel bar for a debrief. 

"We eventually arrived at his hotel room, which was furnished with a bed, a chair and a desk. I opted to sit in the chair, clipboard tightly clenched in my hands — guarding my torso.'

"My eyes were fixed on the room's only exit. Suddenly, he dispensed with the formalities, discarded his jacket and invited me to join him on the bed to watch a movie.

"I sheepishly declined so as not to irritate him and insisted we get some work done. He ordered me to try my drink and started flipping through the channels. My heart began to pound when he informed me that his room should be sufficient for my stay at the convention.

"He reinforced his argument by pointing out that we were on a tight budget and remarked, 'You're not a princess who needs her own room, are you?'

"At first I froze but, thankfully, my fight or flight instinct kicked in and I managed to leave.

"The next day, my fresh-faced candidate unseated an astonished incumbent. In no state to celebrate the victory I returned home, only to be met with news of my termination.

"I had naively thought I immigrated to a country that functioned as a meritocracy… Like most women, I never complained. I could afford neither legal advice nor therapy."

At age 30, Ms Szlakowski entered the world of private equity, where she was often "the only woman in the room".

She says she once dyed her hair brown, so that she would be called by her first name rather than just be referred to as "the blonde".

"Most women I know possess these skills; they are just not listed on their resumes."

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'Toxic culture' can degrade shareholder value

Ms Szlakowski says workplace sexual harassment is a "notoriously underreported human rights issue, a health and safety violation and a professional crisis".

She says the lesson for AMP and other organisations is that sexual harassment needs to be treated seriously or it can erode a company's value, noting that a 2018 report by Deloitte quantified the cost of sexual harassment at $3.8 billion to the Australian economy.

"I think it should be painfully clear, especially to the stakeholders, how a company's toxic culture — where sexual harassment is not taken seriously and handled with the dignity and urgency it requires — can degrade and devalue not only the survivors who report it but an entire company's global workforce and its underlying market value," she says.

"Companies like AMP ultimately serve a broad cross-section of the population as customers. These companies must conduct themselves within the moral and ethical norms of their customer base, or rightly risk extinction."

She noted that Allan Gary's Simon Mawhinney, one of AMP's biggest shareholders, summed this up when he said: 'Companies must have a social license to operate above all else or ultimately it will be your company's downfall'.

"Investors recognize that poor corporate culture ultimately impacts investment outcomes and it's investors who can, and should, push companies to reconsider the serious implications of continuing to do business as usual by prioritising short term gains over long-term sustainability."

But she says calling out sexual harassment should not exclusively rest on the shoulders of the survivors.

"And I would be remiss not to mention that my experience would undoubtedly be exponentially worse if I still spoke with an accent, worked for minimum wage, lived in a non-democratic country, didn't have white skin, wasn't able-bodied, didn't possess a resilient mind or identified as anything other than heterosexual."