Ellen Pao is an American lawyer and the interim chief executive officer of Internet company Reddit. Pao was previously a junior investing partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a corporate director at Flipboard. Pao, along with her two sisters, was born to Chinese immigrant parents. Her father, Young-Ping Pao, was a professor at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Pao was raised in Maplewood, New Jersey. She is fluent in English and Mandarin. Pao graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering in 1991, Harvard Law School with a juris doctor in 1994, and Harvard Business School with an MBA in 1998. From 1994 to 1996, Pao worked as a corporate attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. In 1998, Pao worked at WebTV. Pao worked at several companies in Silicon Valley including BEA Systems as Senior Director of Corporate Business Development from 2001 until 2005.
In 2005, Pao joined Kleiner Perkins, an established venture capital firm in San Francisco, as technical chief of staff for John Doerr, a senior partner, a job that required degrees in engineering, law, and business, and experience in enterprise software. Her base pay was $220,000 plus substantial bonuses. In 2007 she was appointed a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute on the recommendation of Doerr, a trustee. Also in 2007, she became a junior investing partner with Ted Schlein as her boss but was eventually passed over for a senior partner position.
According to Pao, she had the job title of junior partner from her date of hiring[13] and was promised an opportunity to move into an investing role. Doerr, who has expressed awareness of what he considers a gender gap at venture capital firms, mentored Pao, liberally providing feedback, but, in the end, agreed with the other senior partners who had made negative evaluations of her work at the firm. It is Pao's contention, in her suit for gender discrimination, that men with similar profiles were, nevertheless, promoted.
On May 10, 2012, Pao filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her employer. Later, on March 27, 2015, the jury decided the case in favor of the defendant on all counts. The lawsuit alleged workplace retaliation by a male junior partner resulting from his and Pao's romantic affair. She continued to work at the firm until October 1 when, according to her, she was terminated and, according to the defendant, was offered a five-month transition, with pay, to an operating role, but, when she rejected their offer, terminated effective October 31, 2012. Her lawyer said she was fired in retaliation for her lawsuit. The complaint was amended to add that cause of action. The firm said Pao was terminated for performance reasons unrelated to the lawsuit.
Pao joined reddit in 2013 and became interim CEO in November 2014 after Yishan Wong resigned. In her role as CEO, Pao eliminated salary negotiation for Reddit employees, citing a gender-discrimination motivation for the change. In June 2015, Pao was the subject of criticism and harassment by Reddit users after five reddit communities (subreddits) were banned for harassment, with some users labelling her actions as "totalitarian", and users began calling for her resignation. Furthermore, multiple petitions asking for her resignation were formed, garnering over 10,000 signatures respectively. Reddit users also criticized her lawsuit and complained about deletion of posts concerning Pao on reddit.
