Biography
Ellen Pao is an American technology executive, investor, and diversity advocate. A graduate of Princeton, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School, she became widely known in Silicon Valley after filing a 2012 gender-discrimination lawsuit against her employer, the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, alleging she was denied promotion because she was a woman and retaliated against when she complained. She lost the closely watched trial and dropped her appeal in 2015, but the case drew national attention to gender bias in the technology and venture industries.
Pao joined Reddit in 2013 and became its interim chief executive officer in November 2014, succeeding Yishan Wong. During her tenure she pursued anti-harassment measures, including new policies against unauthorized intimate images and the banning of several subreddits notorious for abusive content. These efforts made her a polarizing figure among parts of Reddit's user base.
Her departure was triggered by the abrupt July 2015 firing of Victoria Taylor, the popular employee who coordinated Reddit's 'Ask Me Anything' (AMA) interviews. The dismissal set off a user and moderator revolt sometimes called 'AMAgeddon,' in which moderators took major subreddits private, cutting off access for ordinary users. Amid the uproar, a petition demanding Pao's removal gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures.
Pao resigned on July 10, 2015, and co-founder Steve Huffman returned as CEO. Co-founder Alexis Ohanian publicly took responsibility for the AMA changes, calling it his 'decision' and 'failure,' lending weight to Pao's later characterization of herself as a scapegoat for decisions and harassment that were not solely hers. After Reddit, she co-founded the diversity nonprofit Project Include, served as chief diversity and inclusion officer at the Kapor Center, and published a 2017 memoir, 'Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change.'