NEW YORK, Sept. 21 (UPI) — The Clinton Global Initiative will lay off dozens of employees at the end of the year, after former President Bill Clinton announced last month his 12-year philanthropic cooperative is shutting down.
The CGI is one facet of the larger Clinton Foundation and its premier event, a yearly CGI conference in New York, has become a high profile attraction where world leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, philanthropists, academics, celebrities and athletes rub elbows and discuss ways to combat social ills from poverty to public health.
Clinton announced he would end the 12-year run of the Clinton Global Initiative in August, one of several steps he and Hillary Clinton have announced to wind down their charitable organization, the Clinton Foundation. Should Hillary Clinton become president, the foundation will be greatly reduced and will cease accepting foreign donations, while also handing off ongoing aid projects to other agencies.
Clinton said the CGI will end this year no matter who wins the presidential election, Bill Clinton said.
Politico reported Tuesday dozens of employees of CGI were told at the conclusion of this year’s conference their positions will be eliminated at year’s end. Some of the employees, though it was not immediately clear how many, will be offered new positions with the Clinton Foundation to continue working with high profile donors.
A Clinton Foundation spokesman defended the organization’s handling of the layoffs, saying the group is doing all it can to facilitate new jobs for workers. They were also given four months’ notice of their pending termination.
The foundation is providing departing staff with “a wide range of resources that include career coaching, access to job leads in a variety of fields, and resume and job search strategy,” the spokesman told Politico.
“We informed CGI staff of this transition more than four months before the end of the year, and have provided information about CGI-related roles that will continue.”
