Living with Cancer Taught Me Strength, Wage Theft Taught Me Silence

Diagnosed with incurable cancer in her 20s, Nathalie Jean rebuilt broken systems in public service — only to face wage theft and silence after success.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been managing a rare, incurable cancer. I was diagnosed in my early 20s after years of unexplained symptoms, and since then, I’ve had to navigate school, work, treatment, and life with a quiet understanding that every step forward would require more effort than most people ever see.

And for a while, I made it work. I built a career in public service. I led community development programs, managed federal housing grants, and spent years working with cities to support underserved communities. In May 2023, I was hired to lead a quasi-public agency in Massachusetts — the Brockton Redevelopment Authority (BRA) — that was in need of reform.

I promptly closed out federal audit findings, stabilized troubled grant programs, and secured more than $3 million in new state investment — work that followed nearly 17 years of prior leadership under which those issues had festered. By April 2024, I had received a glowing performance review, a raise, and a three-year contract extension. My work had an impact. I believed I had found my professional home — a place where I could contribute with dignity and security.

Then everything unraveled. In July 2024 — just 14 months into my tenure — the city abruptly removed the BRA’s core grants. The board stopped holding public meetings. And by fall, the agency disappeared — still owed nearly $1 million by the city, with no closure notice to the public. I have also never been paid since my final day last October.

What followed has been a lesson in how systems fail — not just quietly, but deliberately. When I filed suit under the Massachusetts Wage Act in November 2024, the agency didn’t even respond until I requested a default judgment. Eventually, it agreed to the specific amounts owed — but conditioned payment on my signing an unusually sweeping “release” agreement.

The document functions like a gag-order NDA. It would force me to waive all legal claims (even future ones), acknowledge that I’m not entitled to what I’ve already earned, assume legal liability, and remain silent about what happened — while releasing everyone from attorneys, past employees, board members, to insurers from any potential wrongdoing.

Massachusetts law says wages cannot be withheld as leverage. The state’s Wage Act prohibits conditioning payment on signing away rights. And yet when I asked the court to enforce payment without the NDA, it refused — suggesting that doing so would amount to “being my lawyer.” A pre-trial date was set instead. Seven months after I left my role, I remain unpaid — and unheard.

I don’t often talk about my health. I’ve carried it quietly for years. But when you live with a chronic illness, you learn to tell the difference between necessary pain and harm that’s simply inflicted because no one’s watching. That’s what this feels like: not just delay, but punishment through process.

It’s the kind of coercion that rarely makes headlines. But it breaks people all the same — especially those of us who’ve spent our lives surviving in silence.

I was brought in to fix a system that wasn’t working. I did that. And yet, when the work became politically inconvenient, the institution closed ranks — withholding my wages unless I agreed never to speak again.

I know I’m not alone. Many public servants — especially women, especially Black women — are asked to do impossible jobs in broken environments. And when we succeed, the reward is often resentment.

It’s what researchers call the “glass cliff” — when women or people of color are brought in to fix collapsing institutions, only to be pushed out or blamed for the circumstances they inherited.

But there is nothing dignified about being robbed of money you’ve already earned.

I’m still here. I’m still standing. But no one should have to endure this much — not after a life already shaped by survival, only to be subjected to wage theft by a quasi-governmental agency — what should have been, in many minds, a bastion of job security.

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