Ellen Pao

Ellen Pao is the author of Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, a memoir documenting her fight to create change at the highest levels of the tech industry. Pao's tireless advocacy for greater diversity and championing of female leadership has made her an inspiration to many.

Ellen Pao was born in 1970 in New Jersey, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. After earning a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton and a law degree from Harvard, she went on to a successful career in Silicon Valley, at various times working as a senior executive or venture capitalist at companies such as Reddit, Kleiner Perkins, Microsoft, and Flipboard.

In 2012, Pao filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. During the landmark trial, Pao testified to experiences of gender bias and unequal opportunities for advancement for female employees at the company. While she ultimately lost the case, Pao’s bravery in speaking out galvanized many in the tech community to call for more proactive measures to address discrimination based on gender and race.

The media attention generated by her trial also thrust Pao into the limelight, inspiring her to make the issue of tech diversity a personal mission. Her 2017 book Reset lays out her plans for creating lasting change in Silicon Valley and beyond. In Reset,Pao argues for diversity initiatives such as rewriting mission statements to make them explicitly inclusive, establishing annual performance reviews with an eye towards creating equitable promotions and pay, and tying executive bonuses to diversity metrics.

In her book, Pao also discusses her experiences growing up as the daughter of a Chinese-American family and reconciling her traditional upbringing with her drive to transcend societal norms. She recounts her struggles as a female executive in a male-dominated industry, and her response to the sexism she encountered.

Pao has since become an ardent advocate for representing the global diversity of tech. She established Project Include, an organization working to accelerate diversity and inclusion in tech companies, and serves as co-founder of the WallStreetBound Fund, which helps low-income individuals and people of color access careers in finance. Pao also recently joined the board of the Kapor Center for Social Impact, a non-profit dedicated to helping students from underserved communities pursue tech careers.

In Reset, Pao offers an inspiring example of what one person can do to enact meaningful change. In the face of adversity, she has fearlessly managed to shine a crucial light on the inequalities that exist in the tech industry, and continues to fight for greater diversity and inclusion with the same determination and passion that has made her a beloved figure in the tech world.