Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton will be taking a leave of absence from the company, following allegations that he sexually assaulted a longtime girlfriend on a number of occasions. In a letter to employees also released on the company’s blog, Kveton said that he was stepping away from the company “to focus on resolving this situation.”
Mike Temple, the push notification company’s CFO, will take on the role of acting chief executive in Kveton’s absence. In addition, the company’s board of directors has employed an executive search firm to try and find a permanent replacement for Kveton.
According to the letter, Kveton approached the board last month about finding and naming a replacement, though he decided that he needed to step down from the company’s top spot sooner rather than later.
In his post, Kveton said that it “hit (him) a few months ago” that it was time to step down from his job as CEO and find somebody else to lead Urban Airship, which has been growing rapidly along with an exploding market for mobile apps and push notifications.
All of this comes less than a week after a report surfaced alleging that Kveton had repeatedly sexually assaulted a woman who was his girlfriend off and on from 2008 to 2013. On one occasion in 2010, Kveton allegedly forced himself on the woman, whose name has not been disclosed, after she requested a ride home from a bar. Another accusation involved Kveton allegedly surprising the woman and tying her up with reusable bonding tape in 2011.
Kveton isn’t the only tech exec who has found himself out of a job following sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations in recent months. GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner stepped down in April after a sexual harassment investigation revealed “errors of judgment.” Gurbaksh Chahal, the founder of RadiumOne, was forced out of the company after he pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of battery and domestic violence.
