Matt ended up with what would have been my original seat on the couch. Ted sat across from me, the CEO next to him, and the tech investor next to me on my right. The rest of the folks filed in one by one. But Sheryl’s words echoed in my mind, and I moved to one of the power seats - the fourth, backward-facing seat, but at the table nonetheless. I was sure the white men booked on the flight (Ted, senior partner Matt Murphy, a tech CEO, and a tech investor) would be taking those four seats and I would end up on the couch in back. Usually the most powerful seat faces forward, looking at the TV screen, with the second most powerful next to it. The main cabin of the plane was set up with four chairs in pairs facing each other. I was the first to arrive at Hayward Airport. One day, I was part of a small group flying from San Francisco to New York on the private jet of another managing partner, Ted Schlein. Kleiner was then one of the three most powerful venture-capital firms in the world. I had been working for six years at the Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a junior partner and chief of staff for managing partner John Doerr. Less than a year later, I would take those words to heart. Follow her at /heathersomervil.In December 2010, Sheryl Sandberg gave a talk about women’s leadership in which she mentioned “sitting at the table.” Women, she said, have to pull up a chair and sit at the conference-room table rather than clinging to the edges of the room, “because no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side.” The firm said it conducted an independent investigation immediately after Pao raised concerns in 2012 but “concluded (her) discrimination and retaliation complaints were without merit,” according to Kleiner’s response to the lawsuit.Ĭontact Heather Somerville at 51. She says Kleiner Perkins fired her, while the firm says it advised her to leave based on her performance. Pao “experienced continued retaliation after she complained about sexual harassment to the highest level of management of KPCB,” according to the lawsuit. Meanwhile, the man Pao said had pressured her into sex was promoted, according to court documents. The firm did nothing to prevent further harassment and instead perpetuated a culture of gender discrimination by paying her - and other women at the firm - less, failing to promote them and excluding them from partner events, according to her lawsuit. Pao first complained about the firm’s treatment of women in 2007, after she told management about a married male junior partner who she said pressured her into having an affair in 2006 and continued to sexually harass her, according to her lawsuit. Pao took over as interim CEO at Reddit in November. Kleiner has maintained that Pao’s accusations are without merit and said she has “twisted facts and events in an attempt to create legal claims where none exit,” according to court documents.Īlso Monday, the judge heard requests from Kleiner attorneys to obtain information from microblogging site Reddit, Pao’s current employer, that will reveal the value of her stake in the company. Attorneys for Kleiner had opposed Lee’s deposition, calling it irrelevant and an intrusion on Lee’s privacy. Pao, who joined Kleiner in 2005, filed the lawsuit in May 2012, saying that in January of that year she had filed a written complaint with management about what she considered the firm’s culture of gender discrimination she was told to leave the firm in October 2012.Īlso at Monday’s hearing, a judge allowed Pao to question a former colleague, Aileen Lee, about a dinner that only male partners at the firm attended at former Vice President Al Gore’s apartment, and also ask about Pao’s employment and termination. The $16 million request was made during a hearing Monday at San Francisco Superior Court. SAN FRANCISCO - A former Silicon Valley venture capitalist is seeking $16 million from prominent firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in a high-profile lawsuit that accuses the firm of blatant and entrenched gender discrimination.Įllen Pao, the former VC partner, has requested that her former employer pay millions for allegedly stymying her career at the firm and withholding raises and promotions because of her gender.
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