Elisabeth Diana, head of communications at human resources Deel, is no longer with the company, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Bloomberg first reported the news that Diana had resigned from Deel, which was recently accused of planting a spy at rival company Rippling.
TechCrunch reached out to Diana but had not heard back at the time of publication. Her LinkedIn profile shows that she started working at Deel (whose CEO Alex Bouaziz is pictured above) in November 2021 and stopped working there in April 2025. She was previously head of communications at Instagram and corporate head of communications at Facebook.
“We are grateful for the work Elisabeth did while at Deel and wish her the best in her next endeavor,” the company said in a statement.
Rippling, a workforce management platform, announced on March 17 that it was suing Deel over alleged spying, leveling charges ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (often used to prosecute members of the Mafia) to misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition.
At that time, Rippling didn’t reveal the name of the employee in question, but that changed on April 2, when it released an affidavit signed by the employee, Keith O’Brien, who seemed to confirm Rippling’s accusations.
Even more than the already-spectacular lawsuit that Rippling filed against Deel in March, O’Brien’s account reads like the script to a movie about corporate espionage, complete with a sting operation and a smashed phone.
The future of Deel, which was last valued at $12.6 billion, remains in question. The startup is backed by the likes of General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital and Y Combinator. It was said to be eyeing the public markets just two months ago.
Deel responded to Rippling’s lawsuit with a statement denying “all legal wrongdoing” and claiming its rival was seeking to “shift the narrative” from accusations that Rippling itself violated Russian sanctions. (O’Brien later said that at the urging of Deel executives, he’d made statements to various authorities saying that Rippling was facilitating Russian payments — even though he knew those statements were false.)
This post has been updated with a statement about Diana’s departure from Deel, and with more context about O’Brien’s statements.
