Planet Fitness — which faced backlash for allowing a trans man to shave in the women’s locker room — hired a new boss who had required employees to undergo “unconscious bias training” and supported “hiring through a DEI lens” at her previous company.
Colleen Keating, who served as chief executive at rental service FirstKey Homes since 2020, will assume the CEO title at Planet Fitness on June 10, the company announced Tuesday.
During Keating’s tenure at the helm of FirstKey, she was a signatory to a document titled “CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge.”
The corporate executives who signed on to the pledge committed to “continually strive to diversify our workforce, hiring through a DE&I lens to find talent in multiple locations and backgrounds.”
The Post has sought comment from Planet Fitness.
Keating succeeds Chris Rondeau, who will stay on the firm’s board of directors.
Shares of Planet Fitness, which has nearly 2,500 locations across the country, fell by around 1.7% Thursday afternoon.
The chain has been the subject of boycott calls after outraged patrons reported seeing unclothed trans gym-goers in the ladies’ locker room.
Planet Fitness member Patricia Silva, 67, began the uproar last month after posting a video of a trans man shaving in the women’s locker room at a Planet Fitness outpost in Alaska.
In the video, Silva said she saw a transgender person “with a penis” go near a girl who “could have been 12 years old…in a towel kind of freaked out there’s a man shaving in her locker room.”
The gym suspended Silva for breaking its policy of photographing another person at the facility.
Earlier this month, North Carolina law enforcement officials arrested 38-year-old Christopher Miller for allegedly barging into a women’s locker room at a local Planet Fitness and exposing himself while claiming that he was a woman.
Miller was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure and booked into the Gaston County jail on April 4.
Planet Fitness’s official company policy allows members to use the restroom and locker room of their self-reported gender identity, but there was no indication that Miller had identified himself as a transgender woman before venturing inside the ladies’ locker room.
Miller was ordered held on $25,000 bond.
