Angela Báez, a 40-year-old executive at JPMorgan Chase, was caught on video during the New York Knicks championship parade on June 18 dumping the contents of a public trash can directly onto a New York City sidewalk. The goal: she wanted the orange-and-blue bin as a souvenir.
Her job title was Executive Director of Community and Industry Engagement for Card and Connected Commerce. Before that, she was Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
The video, posted online on June 19, shows Báez — dressed head to toe in Knicks colors — upending an overflowing trash receptacle onto the pavement along the Canyon of Heroes parade corridor. Additional footage captured her hauling the stolen city property onto the subway. Someone off-camera can be heard yelling, "What are you doing?"
A fair question.
Báez's career in corporate America had been built almost entirely on DEI. She held diversity-focused roles at Squarespace and Saks Fifth Avenue before landing at The Infatuation, a restaurant review platform JPMorgan Chase acquired in late 2021. There, she served as Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion before being promoted roughly a year ago to her most recent role in JPMorgan's Card and Connected Commerce division.
Her professional bio described her as one of the "brightest voices" in the industry, dedicated to "making a positive impact." That impact, as it turned out, was a pile of garbage on a Manhattan sidewalk.
JPMorgan Chase didn't leave much room for interpretation. A company spokesperson confirmed her termination to the New York Post: "This employee is no longer with the company."
The Knicks had just beaten the San Antonio Spurs in five games to win the franchise's first NBA championship in 53 years. The entire city was celebrating. Millions of fans managed to attend the parade, enjoy the moment, and not commit petty larceny on camera. Báez could not clear that bar.
There is, of course, the irony that writes itself. DEI, as a corporate discipline, is built on the premise that certain professionals possess a deeper understanding of community responsibility, equity, and the collective good. Báez's entire career rested on the idea that she was uniquely qualified to teach organizations how to treat people and spaces with respect.
The counterargument is that one bad moment shouldn't define a career. People do dumb things at parades. Adrenaline, crowds, a once-in-a-generation championship — it's not hard to see how judgment slips.
But that's the thing about viral video. It doesn't care about your résumé. It doesn't check your LinkedIn bio before deciding whether to circulate. And when your entire professional identity is built on lecturing others about doing the right thing, getting caught doing the wrong thing on camera carries a specific kind of weight. If a compliance officer gets arrested for fraud, the fraud is the story — but the job title is the headline.
This isn't really about a trash can. Corporate America has spent the better part of a decade building DEI departments staffed with executives whose primary qualification is telling everyone else how to behave. Billions of dollars in training, consulting, and programming, all oriented around the idea that the right people in the right roles can reshape institutional culture from the inside.
Báez had the title. She had the bio. She had the trajectory.
She also had a city garbage can on the F train.