Pao v. Kleiner Perkins

Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers LLC and DOES 1-20 is a lawsuit filed in 2012 in San Francisco County Superior Court under the law of California by executive Ellen Pao for gender discrimination against her employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Overlapping with a number of condemning studies on the representation of women in venture capital, the case was followed closely by reporters, advocacy groups and Silicon Valley executives. Given the tendency for similar cases to reach settlements out of court, coverage of Pao v. Kleiner Perkins described it as a landmark trial once it began in February 2015. On March 27, 2015 the jury found in favor of Kleiner Perkins on all counts.

Ellen Pao is a Chinese American woman from New Jersey. She has a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, a juris doctor from Harvard Law School and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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, Corporate Business Development from 2001 until 2005.

In 2005 Pao joined Kleiner Perkins 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 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 and was promised an opportunity to move into an investing role. Doerr, who has expressed awareness of the 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 that men with similar profiles were, nevertheless, promoted.

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