A legal complaint accuses high-flying financial equity manager Ian K. Snow of racial harassment and discrimination.
Snow and his “significant other,” Elyse Dula — who apparently goes by Elyse Snow even though Snow is not yet legally divorced from another woman — are being sued by Cordia Foster and Cislyn Wright, who were nannies to the couple’s four children.
Snow’s side, meanwhile, claims in court documents that Foster made “threats to use ‘Black Magic’ on Ms. Dula.”
Among the explosive allegations in the nannies’ complaint, filed with the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, is that, in January 2020, Dula allegedly referred to Foster and Wright as “those black bitches” after the family’s kitten, Scotty, ran outside their Long Island mansion.
The claim also alleges that, after Wright questioned Dula about what she allegedly said, Dula and Snow “began treating [Foster and Wright] as disloyal troublemakers who could be stealing from them.”
In May 2020, the complaint alleges, Snow — who runs the VC and equity firm Snow Phipps Group, which has $2.4 billion in assets — and Dula were preparing to move their four children and nannies “into newly-built servant’s quarters, separate and apart from [the] main house in the Hamptons.” As the project neared completion, Foster allegedly overheard Dula say, “‘I’m happy to be getting these dirty Jamaicans out of my house.’”
Foster, who began working for Snow and Dula in August 2017, is of Jamaican descent, as is Wright, who was hired in November 2018.
According to the complaint, some three weeks after the alleged “dirty Jamaicans” comment, Snow and Dula halved the nannies’ pay “in an [alleged] effort to get plaintiffs to quit,” then allegedly “gratuitously papered over the kitchen window of the new servants’ quarters” so the women could not see outside.
Attorney Gerard Riso, representing Snow and Dula, told The Post, “The defendants deny all of the allegations and we will fight this vigorously.” The couple also denied all allegations in a proposed joint pretrial order filed on December 16, 2022.
In the proposed joint pretrial order, the defense responded that Dula “never uttered those words or any other derogatory or racist comment.”
An attorney for Foster and Wright did not comment to The Post.
In August 2020, according to the complaint, Foster and Wright “were simultaneously terminated without cause or explanation.”
Snow and Dula maintain in the proposed joint pretrial order that the termination was completely within their rights as employers — and that Foster allegedly put out “threats to use ‘Black Magic’ on Ms. Dula.” The order also alleges that the nannies used a “windowless service closet” for “time outs” for the children. But Foster and Wright claim that “when they placed the children in time outs, it was pursuant to Dula’s direction…”
According to the proposed joint pretrial order, Snow and Dula allege that the lower half of the nannies’ window was covered with “translucent window-film” to “secure privacy” because the window “faced into the Defendants’ bedroom, including a dressing area.” As for the pay cut, Riso wrote, “Defendant Snow believed that he was paying substantially above-market for Plaintiff’s services; their performance had become increasingly poor.”
Snow set a record in 2020 when he leased the Hamptons’ priciest summer rental for $2 million from March through Labor Day.
This is not Snow’s only legal contretemps. He and his estranged wife, philanthropist and socialite Mary Snow, are in the midst of a contentious divorce that has gone on for nearly five years. An insider said Mary was not pleased to learn that the complaint and proposed joint pretrial order said that Dula is also known by the surname Snow.
“Mary feels that it is incredibly bizarre,” the insider told The Post. “It’s incredibly disconcerting to her to feel that her husband is giving the name to another woman before settling the divorce.”
At any rate, in the proposed joint pretrial order, it is stated that Foster and Wright had lost Dula and Snow’s “trust and faith, a necessary and non-negotiable component … [for] any person, of any color or racial make-up, to care for their young children.”
