Ellen Pao

Pao's maternal grandfather was a graduate of the Republic of China Military Academy, who later went on to serve as a commander in the Chinese Civil War under Chiang Kai-shek and, in 1948, moved the family to Taiwan, where he retired with the rank of Colonel in 1960.

Ellen Kangru Pao (born 1970) is an American investor and former interim CEO of social media company Reddit.

Ellen Pao was born in 1970 in New Jersey.

She is the middle child of three daughters born to Tsyh-Wen Pao and Young-Ping Pao, immigrants from Taiwan.

Her father, Young-Ping Pao, was a professor at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

Her mother, Tsyh-Wen Pao (née Lee) worked as an engineer in computer sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

Pao is fluent in English and Mandarin and first learned to code from her mother at age ten.

In October 1972, his wife and daughter Elizabeth moved to the New York City area to join Pao's mother and aunt and uncle who were already studying in the US.

The Pao family raised their children in Maplewood, New Jersey, where she graduated in 1987 from Columbia High School.

Young-Ping Pao died in 1987, during Ellen's final year of high school.

Pao's maternal grandparents are Yu-Wen Lee and Ching-Hsin Lee (née Liu), who were from Baoding in Hebei province near Beijing.

Pao graduated with an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1991 after completing a 143-page senior thesis titled "Computer Databases and Business: An Analysis of Informational Privacy."

She then attended Harvard Law School, where she earned a Juris Doctor in 1994.

From 1994 to 1996, Pao worked as a corporate attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

After two years of working, Pao returned to attend Harvard Business School, where she received an MBA in 1998.

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.

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.

While at Kleiner Perkins, Pao led the company's expansion into China.

After several years with Schlein's team, Pao was passed over for a senior partner position.

According to Pao, she had the job title of a junior partner from her date of hiring 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 was Pao's contention in her suit for gender discrimination that men with similar profiles were, nevertheless, promoted.

Pao first became known in 2012 for filing a failed gender discrimination suit against her employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, and has continued to express vocal criticism of the hiring and promotion practices in Silicon Valley.

On May 10, 2012, Pao filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her employer.

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.

Pao claimed that she was terminated abruptly while Kleiner Perkins claimed that she was given a month to accept a paid five-month transition to an operating role.

Pao's lawyer said she was fired in retaliation for her lawsuit and amended the complaint to add that cause of action.

The firm said Pao was terminated for performance reasons unrelated to the lawsuit.

Pao joined Reddit in 2013 as the head of business development and strategic partnerships.

One of her first investments made in this capacity strengthened the ties between Reddit and its de facto image host Imgur.

In 2014, she became interim CEO of Reddit.

During this period, the site banned revenge porn, with other social media sites following suit.

In 2015, decisions made by the company during her tenure, such as the banning of controversial Reddit communities for harassment, generated a wave of controversy that culminated in her stepping down.

The backlash she received sparked debates both on the treatment of women in technology and the need for transparency in a company that relies on volunteers.

On March 27, 2015, a jury decided the case in favor of the company on all counts.

Since 2016, she has been the cofounder and CEO of the nonprofit diversity consulting organization Project Include.