Uh, what? She's a researcher and this is a Google research division. A 1000 citations is a large number for any single paper, even in ML. And yes, even inside Google research, this aspect of impact plays a big role in evaluation of researchers.
Does the same paper get 1000+ citations if it were published in 2010? Or even 2015? Probably not.
Also, anyone who works in the field of AI fairness and ethics research knows about it. So yeah, it's an important study.
What does that tell you?
As far as I can see, the only way she would keep her job, is if her research was so fundamental to the company that they literally could not function without her. Citations don’t tell you that. My boss is a star researcher in his field with multiple 1000+ citation papers. He still has to act respectfully of his boss and peers.