Ellen Pao testifies to wanting $10M to settle Kleiner Perkins discrimination case
Did being left off emails, forced to listen to colleagues chat about porn and the Playboy Mansion during business travel and being left out of a dinner held in her own building for Vice President Al Gore help form a significant barrier to an ex-BigLaw associate’s career at a storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm?
Or was Ellen Pao, as the defense in her California employment discrimination case contends, unable to cut the mustard during a seven-year stint as a junior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers?
That is what a San Francisco jury must decide in a much-watched case challenging the status quo in the largely male, largely white industry. Pao herself took the stand starting Monday, testifying that she had initially rejected an offered position as too junior, was repeatedly excluded and belittled on the job and in work-related settings, and had wanted $10 million to settle the case because she hoped to send a message to Kleiner Perkins that there was a significant price to pay for not fixing the company’s unequal conduct. She is seeking $16 million in the trial, which is being covered by Bloomberg, the San Jose Mercury News, Reuters, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and Wired, among other media.
The case has put a spotlight on an affair Pao says she was pressured into having with a married colleague, who subsequently retaliated against her and left her out of emails when she ended it, she contends. Kleiner Perkins says the relationship was consensual. Neither Pao, who was fired on Oct. 1, 2012, nor the man is now employed there. He was forced out after another female colleague complained that he arrived at her hotel room door during a business trip wearing a bathrobe, Fortune reports.
Pao portrays the company as having a testosterone-driven culture in which she wasn’t taken seriously despite her dual Harvard University law and business graduate degrees and an impressive resume that included a stint as an associate at Cravath Swaine & Moore.
Now 45 and serving as the interim chief of Reddit, Pao says she complained to Kleiner Perkins managing partners about workplace treatment and sought clear policies and training programs, instead of its “loosey-goosey” approach to issues, but to no avail, the Mercury News reports. Pao, for example, wasn’t given a copy of the firm’s anti-discrimination policy when she was hired. Attorney Stephen Hirschfeld, who was retained by Kleiner Perkins to investigate her discrimination complaints, testified that the firm couldn’t locate such a policy when he asked for it; however, Hirschfeld also found that Pao had not suffered from discrimination.
Pao, says she was told, when she complained to partner Ray Lane about the behavior of Ajit Nazre, the man with whom she had the affair, that she should marry Nazre. Lane also warned her, Pao testified, that she would have to quit if their relationship rekindled, but never said Nazre might have to leave, Fortune reports.
“We were clearly not understanding how to behave appropriately,” said Pao, who also told the jury about a business trip on which she had to listen to Kleiner Perkins colleagues and business associates discuss Victoria’s Secret, pornography and the Playboy Mansion.
“It seemed incredibly inappropriate, and it made me uncomfortable,” Pao said of the discussion during a plane ride; however, she wasn’t sure how she could try to curtail the comments “without seeming like a wet blanket.”
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Silicon Valley agog as trial looms in high-profile sex-discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins”
Business Insider: “Investigator: John Doerr told me Ellen Pao had ‘a female chip on her shoulder’ “
Recorder (sub. req.): “Lawyer Testifies About Kleiner’s Handling of Pao Complaints”
