Under overcast skies on a brisk Wednesday last month, more than two dozen Ben & Jerry’s employees at the ice cream company’s global headquarters in Vermont walked out and stood silently in front of their office building. Some bowed their heads and others stared straight ahead as the wind whipped flags—Black Lives Matter, Pride, and the stars and stripes—on a nearby pole. Almost hidden in the back row was company cofounder Ben Cohen, who started the ice cream franchise in 1978 with his pal Jerry Greenfield.
The troupe was protesting what Ben & Jerry’s has called the firing of its CEO David Stever by the company’s parent, Unilever, one of the world’s largest conglomerates, with a market cap of about $150 billion. Stever had only been CEO since 2023, but he had worked for the company for 34 years.
