A former USI Insurance Services producer says the brokerage denied her the support it gave male peers, then fired her over falling revenue. 

Her complaint, filed August 20, 2026 in federal court in Manhattan, accuses the brokerage of gender discrimination and retaliation under three laws: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the New York State and New York City human rights laws. She is asking for damages to be set at trial, back pay, future lost pay, legal costs, and a court order stripping what the filing calls discriminatorily motivated material out of her personnel file. 

She worked as a senior vice president for employee benefits at USI from January 2019 until May 15, 2024, according to the filing. She arrived through a deal. USI bought the assets of GFI Insurance Brokerage, a New York-based brokerage where she had built what the complaint calls "a substantial client-based book of business," and the two sides signed an employment agreement in January 2019. She brought that book with her, and the complaint says USI "thereby received the benefit" of it. Her pay ran on commission with a recoverable draw - an advance charged against future commissions. 

Much of the case comes down to who was staffing her accounts. Part of what USI sold clients, the complaint says, was an operations team of account executives and account managers to handle day-to-day servicing. She never got an account executive, the filing alleges, even though her accounts warranted one - while male senior vice presidents in comparable positions did. So she did the servicing herself, the complaint says, on her own accounts and on those of the acquired brokerage's former principal, who had also moved across in the deal. She was never paid for that work, according to the filing, which says there was "no legitimate business reason for this discrepancy in treatment." 

Account manager support was allegedly thin too. She met an account manager in 2019 who then never worked on her accounts, the complaint says, and it took roughly two years to move her book onto BenefitsPoint, USI's client database. When she asked for help with the move, the filing says she was told other matters took precedence - and that she could not do it herself. Her accounts brought in less money as time went on, the complaint alleges, because of it. 

Training is a second thread. The complaint describes USI ONE Academy as a program for building new business and employee benefits expertise, and calls it necessary for her to succeed. She was offered a place only on a date that clashed with her 2019 maternity leave, according to the filing, and was not offered it again until 2022. The complaint also alleges USI made her take work calls and deal with business matters while she was on that leave. 

Around December 2020 she took the staffing gap to her direct supervisor, a president and regional practice leader over the Northeast employee benefit operation. She told him she thought the gap was about her gender, the complaint says, and that she would need to go to human resources. He told her she would be stripped of everything if she did, according to the filing, which calls that "direct evidence of retaliatory motive." She backed off, the complaint says, afraid of what would follow and wanting to salvage the book she had spent years building. 

She went to HR anyway in June 2022, laying out seven issues to a vice president of human capital: the missing support on her accounts, the servicing work she was never paid for, her pay generally, her supervisor's alleged remark, how she was treated afterward, the interference with her maternity leave, and unauthorized people getting into her work email. HR did nothing and effectively dismissed the complaints, the filing says. She raised much the same issues again on or about October 2, 2023. Roughly six weeks later, according to the complaint, HR told her it did not believe her and would not be fixing anything. 

After that, the complaint says, her bosses went quiet. Nobody raised a problem with her performance, warned her, or told her that her job was at risk, and the filing says USI never sat down with her to go through the numbers or plan the business. 

On May 15, 2024, USI told her she was out, effective immediately. The reasons given, according to the complaint, were low activity, no new business coming in and a small book. 

The sharpest allegation in the filing is about what USI later told the EEOC. In its written response to the agency, the complaint says, USI stated that the same supervisor had decided back in November 2023 to move her into an account executive role - a servicing job that would cut both her pay and her support, and that carried no requirement to bring in new business. She was never told about that decision, the complaint alleges, and her pay stubs showed her paid as a senior vice president and producer the whole time. The filing says USI also told the agency that this supervisor made the call to fire her. 

That is the contradiction her case is built on. Firing her for not meeting senior vice president standards, after deciding she was an account executive judged by different ones for at least five months, is "so illogical, implausible and contradictory that it constitutes a pretext for retaliation and discrimination," the complaint says. 

She took her case to the EEOC on February 25, 2025, filing a charge numbered 520-2025-03378. The agency cleared her to sue on May 22, 2026. One of her three claims covers the stretch from May 26, 2022 through May 15, 2024. She has asked for a jury. 

The allegations in the complaint have not been tested in court. USI has not filed a response, and no court has ruled on any of the claims.