Through to Thriving: Building Community with Ellen Pao

For a special series of episodes that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting a series of discussions designed to help envision possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the present moment, dubbed Through to Thriving. Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

I recently spoke with Ellen Pao, co-founder and CEO of Project Include, and former interim CEO of Reddit and venture capitalist. Like many people in the tech world, Ellen came onto my radar 10 years ago during her landmark discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins.

A few years back, I also had the bizarre opportunity to meet Ellen during a photo shoot for an article in a fashion magazine about “women in the tech industry who speak out.” Since then, I’ve followed her work closely and seen how Ellen has committed herself to cultivating community within the tech policy world. In our conversation about centering community, we also discussed fashion, spirituality, what it means to be ahead of your time, old Twitter, the brosphere, and the world we would like to see built in the next 10 years.

I left the conversation with a few gems. The first comes from Ellen discussing how the future will look back at our present moment. She said,

I think people need to understand that the things that seem normal now are totally not normal. The harm that we allow technology to cause. People are gonna look back and think, wow, that was so barbaric and so greedy. That they would do that to their kids and to women and to transgender people. Like, how is it possible?

She continued with a challenge for us all:

Where do you wanna be in this fight? When your kids look back at you, when your grandkids look back at what you've done, where do you want them to put you on this scale of having done evil and having tried to help?

We also discussed the current tech company culture and how and why it’s important to shift from the usual. Ellen explained:

At Project Include, we've worked with different companies and we've worked with different CEOs, and one of them (a white man) was just like, ‘it was a better experience for me to go into a company that was more like, less bro-y, right? Like, I felt like I had to behave in a certain way. And when we became more inclusive and more diverse, I felt like I could just come in and I could do whatever I wanted instead of like, all right, now we have to go play beer pong. All right? Like, that's what our culture is. Let's go do it. And I didn't feel so, you know, like so rigid.

Given Ellen’s experience working at Reddit a decade ago and my own work at Twitch, we also discussed the rise of the brosphere community into mainstream politics. Ellen said,

I did not predict that. Of all the things that I saw coming, I'm not surprised. But I thought we had moved beyond… It's the same playbook from 15 years ago. Right? The doxing and the swatting. We have not, our regulations have not evolved to prevent it, but also it's like the president of the United States and Elon Musk doing it, right?

Ellen and I also discussed how centering community is essential to doing the work of tech policy. Ellen described the community as:

...more of a feeling, like a feeling of safety and security. A feeling of trust. I think the reciprocity is important. I think, you know, not a transactional reciprocity, but a knowledge that, like, if I needed help or if I just needed to go someplace where I'm not gonna be judged, you know, that, that safety element. Somebody who shares the same values. Not all the values necessarily, but just like, I know this is a good person.

Ellen also explained why building community within the tech accountability space is so important, especially given her own journey.

I feel like people are doing the right thing, and it shouldn't be so hard. I can't help make the system better, but if I can make this journey a little easier and make them feel less alone. I don't want people to go through it the same way I did.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

My name is Anika Collier Navaroli and welcome to the Through to Thriving podcast. I am a lawyer and a journalist, and I have been practicing tech policy over the past decade inside of academia, civil society and industry. And now, I'm a reporting fellow here at Tech Policy Press. This year, my brain has also been occupied thinking through some big questions like, what does it mean to do tech policy now? How do you do trust and safety in a world where you are literally labeled the enemy by the ruling class, and especially as a member of a marginalized identity and identities that are being targeted and oppressed? I think that one of the problems that I'm seeing in the tech and the tech accountability conversations and spaces right now, is that there seems to be little progress or a little path to progress.

The policy conversations in the US are stunted and there is this sense of unraveling that is happening elsewhere and around the world. But one thing I think is really missing is the sort of affirmative vision for what we actually want out of technology. How do we create for more just equitable, sustainable, or democratic future? So, I've also been wondering how do we get through this moment so that we can see beyond it? And how do we put our focus and energy and what do we put our focus and energy into right now that is going to fortify us for what is to come? And how do we not just survive, but somehow, how do we have the audacity to find a way to thrive? A way to dream, a way to create, a way to develop alternative futures.

As you can see, I clearly have a lot of questions, but this really isn't my first rodeo. I've been working in this field long enough to see the policies that I've worked on be rolled back and reversed and removed, and I have learned in this work that policy is only temporary and policies are simply rules of the regime. And when regime change so does the policy, and that really gives us only one option. One of my favorite things in the world is being an auntie and kids in America have this nursery rhyme. If you've never heard it, I recommend the Gracie's Corner version on YouTube, and it's called Bear Hunt. And the lyrics say, we're going on this bear hunt and you reach this obstacle and just like the obstacle in reality, and just like those lyrics, it says, "We can't go over it, we can't go under it, we have to go through it."

Over the next year and during this fellowship, my idea is to host a series of podcast conversations. I'll have about 10 different episodes where I'm going to talk to people who can help lay out the steps along this pathway for how we can make it through until we get to a place of thriving. I want to learn from people and I want to talk to them about prioritizing things like community, joy, imagination, ancestry, youth, truth, privacy, art, and so much more. This is brand new and we'll be figuring out as we go along, but thank you so much for joining me on this journey. For today, for our first episode, we will be talking about community with one of my favorite people on this entire planet, Ellen Pao. Ellen, thank you so much for joining us.

Ellen Pao:

My God, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be part of this. I think of you as my community, even though we haven't known each other that long and we haven't spent that much time with each other, but when I think of community, I really think of our relationship.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Same, same. And that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you especially. I want to get into how we've known each other and meeting each other, but for those folks who don't know who you are, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners?

Ellen Pao:

My name is Ellen Pao. I am the head and co-founder of a nonprofit called Project Include, focused on diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. I was the interim CEO of Reddit when we made this huge effort to reduce harassment and we banned unauthorized nude photos and revenge porn from the site. None of it was very popular and I ended up getting pushed out. Before that, I was at the Kapor Center, and before that, I was at Kleiner Perkins where I worked as a venture capitalist for several years, and then I sued them for gender discrimination and retaliation. I also worked as a lawyer at one point, and then I also worked in different tech companies and startups for several years before I joined Kleiner.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

That's a hell of a resume, Ellen, and I'm so glad that you can join us with all of your experience, especially as someone who has been working in Silicon Valley, working in tech and working in tech policy for so long and can give us your insight and your perspective. We're going to talk about so much of those things, but going back to the moment that we met the first time in real life. Sometimes I hear myself about to say sentences about my life and I think, how the hell did I get here? And this is one of these sentences. We literally met in real life on a photo shoot for Harper's Bazaar Magazine, which I don't know about you, but when I chose a career in tech and tech policy, I wasn't necessarily thinking that I was going to end up in a fashion magazine.

Ellen Pao:

Never. And it was literally bizarre. It was so like, Cinderella. the racks of expensive clothing, the tables of shoes, the huge table of jewelry.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It was such a surreal experience to go through and having, I haven't done anything since that before or after, but getting to meet you at that shoot was one of, I think one of the most grounding pieces and exciting and I think meaningful parts of that experience, even though it was really bizarre for you. Because in reality, when I was first introduced to you, it was about 10 years ago when you were going through your lawsuit and I was following you on social media. It was such a big deal. Everybody who was in the tech world was paying attention and watching your case. I remember, I don't know if you remember, but the courthouse was literally tweeting live updates about your case because it was such a big thing. And I went back and I was reading one of The Guardian articles that was literally, this article is 10 years old, and I was like, wow, it really has been exactly 10 years. I'm sure your brain hasn't let you forget exactly how long it has been, but one of the quotes was in there was saying that you, in your case, that you were putting sexism in the valley on trial and it's a very big deal and it really was.

Ellen Pao:

That was also surreal. Personally, it was so nice to meet you because I had been following what you were doing because it was so important and also, you were one of the few people willing to speak up about all the problems and trust and safety from inside. There were a lot of us talking about it from the outside, and then also, I had been at Reddit, so then I could talk about it with an insider view, but you were in the weeds, you were in the sausage-making process, so that was really important. It was so exciting for me to meet you and also, you were so fashionable, so I was like, I didn't feel like you were out of place there. I was like, oh, I need to step up my game. I'm a little embarrassed. I don't even remember what I was wearing, but I remember you had on a tracksuit and it was, yeah, they looked were they were not sweats, like normal people would say sweat. And then you had your nails done and they made you undo your nails. And I was like, no, I think your nails look.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. It was literally like hair, nails, makeup, wardrobe, the whole thing.

Ellen Pao:

It felt very Cinderella. It was kind of magical and it was nice, like one of the silver linings of a very hard journey for both of us. All of a sudden, there's something really nice for us that usually it was the opposite, like a lot of hate and you get a lot, literally it's the opposite of the shit that gets thrown at us every day.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Right, right. And I think that's part of why I also value that experience and that memory and meeting you in so many ways because I had been so isolated beforehand, it was one of the first times that I was really honestly, leaving my house to go someplace that wasn't Congress, or that wasn't to talk to a lawyer, and was to do something that was just genuinely joyful, and was something that was again, being the story which, everyone feel free to go back and Google and read, was about a group of truth-tellers and our stories and women who have been through this experience and recognizing, I think there was something about not being in the experience alone and recognizing that there were so many of us who have done this and folks like you who have done this and were way ahead of their time. Your lawsuit was 10 years ago. It was before the Me Too movement. You really were a pioneer in being able to speak out about so many of the things that we now know to be commonplace in the industry. What does it feel like, honestly, to be ahead of your time?

Ellen Pao:

It's interesting. I used to work for this guy who was a technologist at BA Systems, which got bought by Oracle. It was middleware, software, some company that nobody heard of, but he was ahead of his times technologically, so he would see what needed to be done and he was always so frustrated because nobody else could see. They couldn't see and he was always trying to break down walls, and so that kind of prepared me. I was like, I would be angry and frustrated all the time, although I do get super frustrated because I'm like, "We told you. How many more ways do we have to tell you? Why won't you listen?" It's not that much fun. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Using the apps and I know you don't use face recognition on your phone either…

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Nope.

Ellen Pao:

...Face ID, and it would be to pick up the phone and it works, but you live in this world where you're like, "Oh, I know where this is going and it's not pretty." It's nice because you're not surprised by stuff. I knew this was coming and here it is, so I haven't used a face ID and I have things prepared. I knew I was going to get fired, so I had all my stuff out of my office. You're more prepared for things, but it is harder because you wish you could change things and you can't because nobody else sees it.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. I think that wish to change is something that I have also, I have felt. Tell me a little bit more, too, about how your experiencing and you going through your lawsuit made you, I don't know, willing. I don't know if it's willing, but you watch out for all of the rest of us who come after you in a really loving way of building community and I feel like those things are tied together.

Ellen Pao:

I was lucky because before I sued, I'm just, I don't know, anal is not the right word, but do my research. I do my work and I talked to a bunch of ex-Kleiner partners to see, is there any way to change the firm from inside? I talked to a bunch of people who had sued investment banks, so they were the first wave, I think, of major litigation and they were so helpful to me.

One conversation and they warned me, "Your friends are going to turn on you. Nobody's going to support you. They're going to lie on the stand. They're going to fire you. They're going to have detectives following you. They're going to dig up every possible thing that you have ever done. If you've had anything that you've done that's been on, I don't know, anywhere, they're going to dig it up and they're going to smear your name in the dirt."

And it was with a sense of wanting to help me and they were so open about their experiences and they were so helpful that it prepared me. Again, I know what's going to happen, so I'm ready for it. It was still extremely painful and I feel like people are doing the right thing and it shouldn't be so hard. So, if I can help people in a way that I can't help make the system better, but if I can make this journey a little easier and make them feel less alone, I don't want people to go through it the same way I did.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. I'm grateful, in many ways, for that experience that you had because it is informed and helped my experience be so much better and feel so much more supported because I think this world of tech and this world of tech policy is not possible to do without the support of a community and support of folks beyond yourself who also understand, I think, especially those of us who work especially in social media, especially in content moderation, that world. We have a trauma bond, that we have together that I think is really interesting and important to be able to build on. You mentioned a little bit about your case and some of the things that happened and I'd love to talk a little bit more about that, and before I actually met you in real life and while I was following you in your case, I also followed you on Twitter, and I would love to talk a little bit about what it meant to have spaces like old Twitter that we were able to build and foster digital community in a really interesting way.

Ellen Pao:

But it was fun. People would say funny things and then you would meet people that you liked on Twitter, and then you would meet them in real life. I just met somebody two days ago that, "Oh, we know each other." And I'm like, "I don't remember meeting you. God, I can't remember anything anymore." And he's, "No, on Twitter." And I was like, "Oh yeah. Okay, I do know you," but it's like you could connect with people in a way where it was frequent. Every day, somebody's Tweeting something and you would get to know them in a way that it felt very real, and then it became less real, and then it became so negative. It used to be fun for me to go on Twitter, and then it became kind of a job like, oh, I need to get this message out, and then I need to clean up whatever aftermath is coming from having said something mildly controversial because it's true and people don't want to believe it, and it became less and less fun.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I think it's really important that we talk about that because having worked at old Twitter, I think that there is this sense of nostalgia that also comes with a, I don't know, amnesia what old Twitter was. We want to think about X and Elon Musk and say rightfully, that the platform has deteriorated, and some bad stuff was really going on back then. And one of the things that I remember reading about in your book was the birth of, they are, disinformation campaigns, because they are moneyed and they are intentional that law firms and PR firms have been using. It's common case now. We see this happening with Blake Lively, and happened with Megan Thee Stallion, happened with Meghan Sussex. These huge disinformation campaigns that really take the tactics of Gamergate and direct them towards women who are speaking truth, and that is something that happened to you 10 years ago.

Ellen Pao:

On my own platform, too.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Wow.

Ellen Pao:

Every day I'm like, "Oh God, why am I here?"

Anika Collier Navaroli:

What was that experience like?

Ellen Pao:

You've experienced it. It's like, you try to be thick-skinned about it because half of them are probably bots or paid people and it's not true, but then there's so many people who just jump on that wave. And then the brigading and the cross-brigading and it becomes its own thing that's got its own life. It's been fascinating because after, I still get emails once in a while from people who are like, "Oh, I was part of the people who are really attacking you…"

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh, really?

Ellen Pao:

“.... on social media, and I'm sorry you were trying to do the right thing.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh, wow.

Ellen Pao:

Yeah, so I've gotten a lot of those and I'm just like-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

How does that make you feel?

Ellen Pao:

It was fascinating. Once I got a bunch of them, oh, these people, they're like mindless drones. They're just following the wave of emotion and energy and a lot of them were just like, "I wanted karma points. I wanted to get that engagement high."

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, I think, at least from my own experience, I think there's the difference between you work in the field, this racialized gender harassment that goes out towards all folks on the internet, and then experiencing it directing towards you. It's like, a cognitive dissonance of, I know to expect this thing, and yet, when it's happening to me, I don't really know how to feel. At least that was my experience going through it.

Ellen Pao:

I tried to keep it ... After a while, it just stopped. I was like, I can't read this. There's way too much of it. People spend so much time making, this is before generative AI, so they're Photoshopping picture together, porn-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Effort.

Ellen Pao:

Yeah. I'm like, how much time do you have? And imagine if you put all this effort into something productive. You could get ... Some of it was actually quite good.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

That's really interesting when you say that some of it is quite good because one of the things that I've always said jokingly about a lot of the white supremacy messaging is that it's like, they need a rebrand because they've been saying the same things over and over again that it just, you need to hire a ghostwriter. It doesn't hit the same way that it used to when you see it so many times over and over and over again. It's very definitely different experience. Let me ask if this is something that you've also experienced. Going through a pretty public spotlight, you have a lot of folks that come in your life who are wanting things from you or wanting some transactional relationship, and so I think part of why I think community and true community is so important is to be able to have those spaces that are restorative and recharging and are not necessarily transactional, right?

Ellen Pao:

Yeah. It's actually very positive for me too to connect with people who are in this process because it is that trauma bond, but also I know what the relationship is and it's reciprocal. We're going to have a connection that's based on shared values, that's based on, I know that you do the right thing when the time comes to it, and it's harder for me, I think to trust people and to, sometimes I joke that I hate people. Having worked at scale, see what people are like and the mob mentality. It's just like, I don't want to deal with people.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Listen, working at Reddit, I can imagine. You see the worst.

Ellen Pao:

And then, they turned on you and it's just like, why? Why do I want to meet more people? But when I meet people like you, oh, right away there's a connection. I know you're not going to attack me on the internet that you would stand up for me instead of standing by. There's something about somebody who is willing to put the group above themselves. The decision that you made was, okay, I'm not going to sit and collect my salary and move up through the ranks. I'm going to build a better society. I'm going to do the right thing. And there are not that many people who will do that. We are seeing that today the law firms are folding. A lot of the big universities are folding. They've faced giant endowments, but they're like, for whatever reason, they're not standing up for their people. They're not standing up for their values. And it is very hard to find people who actually do the right thing on their own without having a crowd leading them to that.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

And just listening to what you're saying and how much, this is also kind of tied to this moment and what we're seeing. And I think that you're right, and one of the things I said very often when talking a couple of years ago was, I didn't want to have to do the things that I did. I wish somebody else would have spoken up. I wish somebody else would have. And let me say very thankfully, there was another whistleblower who spoke forward and talked to the January 6th committee, and I remember having to ask myself, who do I want to be when history looks back at this moment? And not feeling even prepared to be that person, but having to recognize like, oh. Oh, it matters. It matters, so do it.

Ellen Pao:

Yeah, because I felt like I didn't really have a choice. I had a choice, but I didn't either. If I didn't speak up, who was going to do it? Who was going to, and I had financial security, I had a clean background. There's nothing to dig up about me and I could, other than making up shit, but yes.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, there's always that. And I have just a more general question for you about the topic that we're talking about, which is like what does community mean to you?

Ellen Pao:

It's more of a feeling, a feeling of safety and security, a feeling of trust, a feeling of, I think the reciprocity is important. I think not a transactional reciprocity, but a knowledge that if I needed help or if I just needed to go someplace where I'm not going to be judged, that safety element, but somebody who shares the same values. Not all the values necessarily, but just I know this is a good person, and it's somebody who's going to help me stay a good person, and do the right things, but also let me make mistakes and not be judging. I don't have to be a perfect person for them and they don't have to be a perfect person for me, but we're on a path of trying to do good for each other.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, I think that piece of safety and the non-judgment is so important. I will never forget a black woman that I worked with who in many ways built community for us inside of industry, who for the first time told me, literally one of the first times in my life, "Hey, you're allowed to make mistakes and if you make a mistake, I'll have your back." It was mind-blowing. I was just like, I'm definitely not allowed to make mistakes. I'm definitely not allowed to make them at work, not in public, and not in this space. And if I do, it's a wrap. But I think that space of being able to say, we are all human and we have our own humanity and connecting with that is I think, honestly, very unique in the tech space. Tell me a little bit more. I know we talked about this a little bit, but why is building community so important to you, especially given the experience that you've had, and the experiences that you have and the future that we're seeing, and not just the future but the present that we're currently living in?

Ellen Pao:

When I was going through a hard time, I read all these books on Buddhism by Buddhist monks and there's this deep belief in connection and suffering, and that connecting with people is very healing, and there's a part of me that does believe that. I'm an introvert also, and then I also don't really trust people that much, so it's hard, but I do feel like I like being part of a team. I like being part of a group. I like doing things together and being able to do more because I've got this expert in doing ... The amount of stuff we got done at Reddit, it was unreal. And also when I came out, early on, I worked at the startup Tellme, and we had 20 people and the amount that we got done because everybody trusted each other and we were helping each other and it was like, it's magical.

That part I really enjoy and appreciate being able to do things with other people and get more done and to find a common mission and to have everybody all working together or whether it's that or just during the holidays with my family, everybody's working together to create this meal and this experience and having shared experiences is actually quite, I don't know, it is restorative. It is fun. It's something that is sometimes hard for me, but I know it's good for me. And also, I don't want to be the old lady who lives alone. Everybody don't talk to her. I grew up in a small town where you said hi to everybody on the street and it was nice. Now, I think it's not as friendly and nice anymore, but back then it was nice. Like San Francisco, when I first moved here, everybody was so friendly. It was like, people like that.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting that you turn to Buddhism during your time as well. I did the same and found myself sitting in Sangha during lead-up to enduring while speaking to Congress and figuring out a way to make peace with myself, the universe, and I think even that community was something that was so important to me. I know that you meditate and just being a part of a community of also do yoga, like yoga and breathing and having these practices that calm the nervous system and that create peace and restoration for us. You mentioned a little bit about a team and a group. You host what I lovingly call a Supper Club for a small group of folks who have been a part of the truth-telling in tech accountability world. Tell me a little bit about that. We're going to keep it very anonymous, but tell me a little bit about that.

Ellen Pao:

Supper Club that you've now ...

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes. Yes.

Ellen Pao:

Oh, I think a lot of times when I talk to people, it's at a moment of crisis. They reach out because they don't have anything else and they're grasping at straws and it's a time of crisis, and I was like, well, I want to help, but also, maybe we can have times of joy where we're not in crisis, where we talk about dogs, our dogs, and it's like, we have a normal conversation where we're not trying to overcome this trauma that we've experienced, where we connect over something positive and fun. Can I bring joy to people and myself? And if that just takes a meal at my house, I'm happy to do that. It's so easy.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. Where did you get the idea to do this?

Ellen Pao:

I tried to do it with another group and it didn't really work, so it was like, let we try to do it with another group of people and let me just see. I think I've always felt like ... My sister wanted to run a restaurant. She feels very strongly about connecting over food and I think ... I am not a big cook, but that connection to the shared experiences over a meal is powerful to me. As a family, my dad enjoyed food, so we would ... We didn't have a lot of money, so we would drive into Chinatown in New York and we would have a dinner at this Chinese restaurant almost every weekend, and it was our special treat, and if we were super lucky, we would get to have coke at dinner. But that was our thing, exciting and fun, and it was our relaxed enjoyment time. And I still get that feeling when you have a nice meal and the food is good and people are comfortable. It's a very connective experience and I think people feel comfortable when they're being fed and taken care of a little bit.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I very much agree as a recipient of this kindness. I grew up in a family that had dinner every day at 5:30 together and I do think that there is something, I don't know, spiritual maybe about breaking bread with folks, especially folks that have shared experience and histories and as you've said, values with, and being able to sit down. As I mentioned before, I think in these spaces, sometimes being ahead of your time or being a truth teller or being someone who's willing to go against the grain is incredibly isolating, and the isolation is, I think sometimes the hardest part in feeling so alone, and so being able to plug into a community of folks who you don't have to explain. There's just like a-

Ellen Pao:

Hopefully, you don't have questions because-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

... stupid question, stupid questions, and there are questions that are, there aren't those sort of questions. There's a safety as you mentioned, that I think is essential to being able to be in a space. Let me ask you, how do we continue to do these sort of community building exercises and resource and maybe in a larger scale?

Ellen Pao:

I know you're like, oh, we should fund it and I am so bad at asking for money, so I don't know. I think if there's somebody who's interested in funding it, we could do it at a larger scale. I think there are a lot of people who would benefit from it, but I'm too much of an introvert to go and organize it, but I think it would be good, and I think there is something in supporting all these people who have sacrificed so much, and it is so lonely. It is, I think I was lucky I had family support, but it is so lonely to go up against the whole industry by yourself, it feels.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

To any funders who might be listening to this brand new podcast who are interested in looking for some ways to support the future, it sounds like community building is definitely one way that we can do that. I'd love to talk to you a little bit more about the future and think a little bit about what's ahead. I think what I've noticed, at least in my experience is that, when you spend so much time warning people about what's in front of your face or what's about to come, we don't necessarily get to imagine alternatives or we are so often in a defensive stance that we don't get to really play offense, right?

Ellen Pao:

Yeah. Yeah. It's also hard when you see what needs to be done and it's, I don't know that people are going to get there. I know we need reform and regulation. It's not perfect. It's not going to be great, but look what happened when we didn't have any of it.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. How do you think the community can help get us to that place?

Ellen Pao:

I think people need to speak up. It's not easy, but it's also not hard. You don't have to go to Congress. You just tell your boss, "This is not good." It took one person to create a petition at Skadden, Arps, a law firm that was rolling over and that sent a message to other law firms, the fact that all these employees, these junior people, don't want to work at a law firm that's going to be doing, is it, Milbank? One of them has to do a hundred million dollars of Trump pro bono work. I was like, that is-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

A lot. That's a lot of hours.

Ellen Pao:

Lawyers for a year full time. I'm like, I don't even know how that happens and what lawyer's going to want to work on that?

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, so the importance of just even one voice speaking up. You mentioned you don't have to go to Congress. I don't know that I would recommend that route if anyone is thinking about it. It's definitely a hell of a way to go.

Ellen Pao:

I'm curious, when people come to talk to you, do you recommend that they move forward? Because the investment banking people that I talked to who had sued, one of them was like, "Do not do it. Do not do it." She did not regret it at all, but she's a very strong person and she was the one who was like, "Go meditate." But she was like, "Do not do it. It will upturn your life. People turn on you. It's so lonely, so hard." She would not wish it on her worst enemy, and most people, I push them in that direction, too, because if you're not sure, then you shouldn't do it. If you are positive, then go and do it. But if you are not sure, you might not have enough conviction to get through it.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, hard agree. I think it feels a lot like, after you go to law school and people ask you if they should go to law school and every lawyer's like, "Don't go to law school." It's like, absolutely not. If you don't know what, you don't have a plan. If you don't know exactly what you're doing, don't do it. I think there was a time when I was saying, and I still do believe in many ways, we need folks to speak up. We need folks to let us know what is happening inside of so many of these companies because there's not transparency and there's not accountability. And I will say the personal costs and the personal risk is so much and so astonishing that I don't feel like I can ask anybody else to take that on. It was tremendous for a tremendous weight to walk through and to be able to come out of being at the other end. I'm with you in that I have, I'll be honest, I have a lot of regrets and I do think at the end of the day, I would not have been able to live with myself if I didn't do what I did.

And I think now, the alternative is I'm having to learn how to live with myself doing what I did, which is just a little bit of a different world. But again, I'm happy to be in this space. I'm happy to have the opportunity to have these conversations and to have a fellowship like this and to be able to talk about the things that are essential to be able to get us to a better place and the things that have helped along the way, like community, like meeting you, like having these really important spaces. I'd love to ask you from your view, you've been doing this for so long, you're like an OG in the space, what would you like to see happen in the tech policy space in the next 10 years? Thinking about 10 years ago, you were sitting in the courtroom, we're now here. I don't know that we could imagine being here, but if we could imagine something else for the next 10 years, what would that look like? Especially, you mentioned you were a leader in the social media space, not just in name, but also in deed. You reduced harassment. You decided to ban revenge porn at a time in which it was incredibly unpopular in a space in which those things were incredibly popular. And this was again, ahead of its time.

Ellen Pao:

When I talk to younger people, they don't get it. They're like, what do you mean you could do that? And it's so exciting. That's not part of their experience and what they think is normal because it was so normalized back then. People were mad. No, they weren't that mad. I think people did understand that it shouldn't happen, but it was all over the place and none of the other platforms was willing to do anything about it. And then once Reddit banned it, everybody banned it. It's still out there, but it's not on every single platform that you visit, which was what it was like 12 years ago. I think people need to understand the things that seem normal now are totally not normal, harm that we allow technology to cause, people are going to look back and think, wow, that was barbaric and so greedy that they do that to their kids and to women and to transgender people. How is it possible?

And I think in order to get people to change, it's like, where do you want to be in this fight? When your kids look back at you, when your grandkids look back at what you've done, where do you want them to put you on this scale of having done evil and having tried to help? I think that's the only thing that's going to move people. It's like the shame of being in that camp that was so barbaric, that was so hateful and that allowed it, and I don't know that we need ... I think some states are starting to regulate, picking up the gap of federal government not doing anything. We're looking at other continents, other countries, to try to figure out what the right thing to do is, but the US is going to be behind because we're allowing this random, let's protect free speech that we like and not the free speech that's negative to our political party. And that's going to cause a lot of harm for a long time.

In order to fix it, I think you need fair regulation, and that's not going to come under this administration. I would love to see more specific rules on the harms that are not allowed, these types of harassment, this type of engagement, banning what kids are allowed to do. I think it's so important. Kids cannot learn on their own because you've wired it so much towards triggering that dopamine rush that they're addicted to, and we know what causes harm. Now, we're dependent on schools banning phones, but really, we talked about it before where like, air traffic control, somebody governing this stuff.

Although, I was going to say the planes are falling out of the skies these days. Not doing that very well, so we need to do it better than that. And I feel like we are rallying around the kids a little bit, but it's so politicized. We need to really figure out how can we do this in a way that actually makes sense? But so few people care about that. It's so ... now. I've never been a fan of regulation, but there's never been a time when we've needed it so much. We look at what these companies are willing to do in the interest of making money and having power and control, and it's unbounded. It is unbounded.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. Yeah. I just have a couple more questions for you. One is, what do you think this world would look like if we had more women of color CEOs of tech companies?

Ellen Pao:

I don't know. It's hard for me to say because there are the exceptions, where we all know women of color where they have done harm, but I do think having experienced the harm makes you less willing to inflict it on others. Women of color experience much more harm on the internet, and there are all the Pew studies and Gallup polls that show that. And I do think when you've experienced that harm, you know what it actually is and the cost of it, and that I would hope would cause you to be more willing to take the hard actions, which were actually not that hard, to prevent it from happening to other people. I think you bring in people who have more empathy because they've experienced it, who may have more empathy in general, who aren't necessarily, they're not part of the monolithic culture of tech that somebody was like, "Oh, it's the bro sphere now. It's not bro culture. It's bro sphere."

We've never been part of the bro sphere so we don't buy into it, and all the harm that you create. You have hopefully a better company culture, you have better decisions being made. There are all these benefits to a diverse team that hopefully, somebody who's from a woman of color would be able to benefit from and project include work with different companies, and we've worked with different CEOs and one of them was just like, white man was like, "It was a better experience for me to go into a company that was less bro-y. I felt like I had to behave in a certain way, and when we became more inclusive and more diverse, I felt like I could just come in and I could do whatever I wanted instead of, all right, now we have to go play beer pong. All right, that's what our culture is. Let's go do it. And I didn't feel so rigid," I think. I don't think he used that word, but-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, but you just mentioned the bro sphere, which I think honestly is an interesting, I don't know, example of the power of online communities if I'm being really honest. I think you definitely saw the beginning of the bro sphere working at Reddit and I worked at Twitch, and those were the places where any sort of corners of the internet started and thrived, and have now become our political driving force, which I think is confusing, but again, also really shows the sort of power of what a community, and an online community, can do.

Ellen Pao:

I did not predict that. Of all the things that I saw coming, I'm not surprised, but I thought we had moved beyond. I really thought-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, I think it's, one of the last things I'll say here is I think it's fascinating to me how much that culture has become a part of everyday political culture, things like doxing and things like swatting were really gamer culture, and I was reading that judges are now getting pizza boxes sent to their house. When I was working at Twitch, that was a huge thing with gamers being able to say, "I know where your address is. I'm going to send you a pizza box." I never thought, I saw that this sort of, radicalization was happening, but I didn't necessarily see us getting to this place here.

Ellen Pao:

It's the same playbook from 15 years ago. The doxing and swatting, our regulations have not evolved to prevent it, but also, it's like the President of the United States and Elon Musk doing it, getting their followers to do it. It's become this accepted tactic basically. They're not doing it themselves, but they're sharing information that is basically encouraging people to do it.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. Yeah. It's again, been really fascinating to watch, that online community and culture grab hold of the rest of the world with, in saying that, I think one of the last questions I want to pose for you is, where are you outside of the community that you're building? Where are you finding community online, offline, these days?

Ellen Pao:

I do more offline. I've not been on, I deleted all of my content from Twitter. I've held onto the account because I don't want somebody else to take it and use it. I should be on Instagram more, but I'm not. I do a little bit on LinkedIn, but not much. I was on Bluesky quite a bit, but recently it's gotten too big and I'm like, oh, I can see where this is going. I don't want to invest more into it. And then Snap, I was never that into, and I never did Threads. I'm tired of it all and I'm also jaded. I'm like, yeah, I know where this is going to go. We don't have a world where it can go to a good place.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that takes us back to how we started this conversation, which was being ahead of your time and being able to see the patterns of the past and recognizing how they can repeat themselves and are present and into our future and what that could potentially look like. And then also recognizing the importance of community and building with like-minded folks to be able to counter these moments and these movements and to get us again to that place of thriving.

Ellen Pao:

For me, it's so important that you thrive, that people who speak up and do the right thing are allowed to thrive. It's an example for other people to follow, but it's also like we can't just have these people disappear. They should be rewarded, and they should be able to thrive, and they should be able to continue to do the things they love.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Thank you so much for that, Ellen. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ellen Pao:

Thank you.