Ellen Kangru Pao (Chinese: 鮑康如; born 1970) is an American lawyer and businesswoman who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of the social media company Reddit from 2014 to 2015.

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

Pao's maternal grandfather[21] 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.

In October 1972, his wife and daughter Elizabeth moved to the New York City area to join Pao's mother, aunt, and uncle who were already studying in the U.S.[22] In 1991, Pao graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University after completing a 143-page senior thesis titled "Computer Databases and Business: An Analysis of Informational Privacy.

[13] 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.

[42] Following efforts by Wong to scale back salary negotiation during the hiring process, Pao decided to give two final offers (one with more cash, one with more equity) to all prospective employees.

After seeing that Reddit's previous offers were not correlated with gender, Pao stated that the new policy was still the fairest, as well as a stepping stone to having publicly posted salaries.

[55] Pao subsequently founded the nonprofit Project Include with Erica Baker, Tracy Chou, Freada Kapor Klein and four other women in the technology industry.

Aimed at startups with 25 to 1,000 employees, the group develops human resources advice in a series of meetings with clients and publishes anonymized progress reports under a Creative Commons license.

[71][72][73][74] Though many reporters commented positively on the changing culture, some expressed a foreboding that companies would be less likely to hire women during a period of abundant legal action.

[79][80] A judge ruled on June 18 that Pao would only be responsible for $275,966 citing the economic resources of both parties under the Fair Employment and Housing Act.

[83] In the Re/code post, she stated that she was deciding not to appeal but still paying $276,000 due to an additional stipulation by Kleiner Perkins that the fee could only be waived after signing a non-disparagement agreement.

Multiple change.org petitions calling for Pao's resignation were created by displeased Reddit users and the most popular one reached 10,000 signatures in the days following the change.

Ultimately, the board asked me to demonstrate higher user growth in the next six months than I believe I can deliver while maintaining reddit's core principles.

[91] Expressing frustration over the decline in communication from Reddit management, AMA moderators stated that they had only learned about the firing indirectly after it happened.

[92][93] Despite one post to the contrary, Taylor's dismissal was widely attributed to Pao, with some commentators suggesting that the move diminished her credibility as an advocate for female employees.

[55] On July 12, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, who had previously defended the five bans on Quora, began a series of posts which he referred to as "declassifying a lot of things".

[100] In a later post, which recalled two instances of Pao arguing against purging hateful subreddits, Wong sharply criticized the movement against her and warned about stricter policies under the site's cofounders.

[102] On July 13, Reddit's chief engineer Bethanye Blount left the company for unrelated reasons and opined that Pao did not receive enough support from the board.

Huffman had previously released an open letter on the website in response to the George Floyd protests, in which he affirmed that the platform "[does] not tolerate hate, racism, and violence.

[107] Several popular subreddits, such as r/NBA and r/NFL, agreed with Pao, shutting down their pages for 24 hours, in a polemic against Huffman, calling out his letter as "hypocritical" and asking Reddit's leadership to take more concrete actions against racism on the platform.

As examples, she cited Facebook's role in facilitating the Rohingya genocide and propagating "anti-vaccination propaganda" under Mark Zuckerberg, Juul's misleading promotion of nicotine products, including to children, under Kevin Burns, and numerous scandals at Uber under Travis Kalanick.