PayPal Stories Archive

This month, we are featuring Louise Pentland as part of our Women Leaders at PayPal series. Louise is the SVP, Chief Legal Officer and Company Secretary at PayPal, is setting up a global pro-bono program at PayPal and in her spare time offers her legal assistance to under-privileged, low income and underserved populations.

 

I grew up in Newcastle, UK. I spent the first six years of my professional life in the UK, where I graduated from law school, got my first job teaching, worked on the legal team at Avon Cosmetics, and eventually joined Nokia -- initially as a legal counsel and finally as the Executive VP and Chief Legal Officer. I worked at Nokia for more than 15 years, overseeing the sale of their handset business to Microsoft Corp. in 2014 for $7.2 billion. Once the company split, I wanted to take a break, so I resigned and took a sabbatical.

 

During my 10-month sabbatical, I spent time with my family and pursued my passion of helping people in need. I did pro-bono work representing children asylum seekers fleeing South America. I was living in Texas at the time, and heard many stories about child migrants from countries like El Salvador and Honduras, fleeing gangs and violence. They were making dangerous treks from their home countries and once they got to the US border, they weren’t being treated well. So I joined a human rights organization in Texas that was taking on volunteers. There, I got to represent these wonderful kids who had escaped horrible situations to come to the US and start new lives.

 

Even after taking the role of General Counsel at PayPal, I never stopped doing pro-bono work, both externally and internally. In fact, I’m establishing, with my awesome global legal team, within PayPal our first ever global pro-bono program. The legal team will be able to spend time doing pro-bono work that keeps in line with our mission at PayPal of helping the underserved.

 

And I’m continuing to do external pro-bono work as well. I recently accepted an invitation to join the Silicon Valley Law Foundation, which provides under-privileged, low income and underserved populations with legal assistance. I’m also working with NLADA, which is focused on ensuring people have a right to justice and access to a public defender, which is a big problem.

 

I joined PayPal in April 2015 a few months before the company split with eBay. At that time, a lot of companies were splitting up. It was a hot market for lawyers and many companies in Silicon Valley were looking for General Counsels (GCs). Since there weren’t many women GCs in the Valley, I had a lot of really interesting companies reach out to me. But after taking a break from the corporate world, I promised myself I would only take a job that met three criteria for me:

 

First, the company had to be a fit culturally. When I met Dan Schulman, I was really impressed with his leadership style and his mission for the company. Working for a company whose mission I believed in was a must. And the fact that I could come in early on and help shape the culture and mission of the company was really important to me.

 

Second, I wanted to join a company that had a social mission. One of the things that kept me at Nokia for so long was that we did things that positively impacted people’s everyday lives. I wanted to know that when I came to work everyday, I was doing something good, making a difference. PayPal mission’s and Dan’s vision sparked a flame that inspired me and continues to everyday.

 

Third, I wanted to be part of a growth company. I had been part of a company that had been number one in the world for a long time, but then went through a decline with rounds of cost cutting and layoffs. It was a great learning experience, but it was also really tough. After that, I knew I wanted to be part of a growth company whose market potential was uncapped. I did a lot of diligence on PayPal before accepting the job, and after all my research it was clear that PayPal had huge potential.

 

It’s true -- the stats haven’t changed in the past 10 years in C-level positions. Women partners are often paid significantly less than their male counterparts. I’m very active both inside and outside of PayPal in working and mentoring women to help give them the confidence they need to even apply for these jobs. Many times, highly qualified women don’t see themselves as ready for these jobs. But oftentimes, when they hear how I did it – it inspires them to take career risks, raise their hands more and put themselves up for positions that they previously didn’t think they were qualified for.

 

One of the many reasons I came to PayPal was because I wanted to use PayPal as a platform for gender diversity, to vote with my feet and my wallet, to establish programs to foster diversity and to direct our funds and resources toward firms that enable women to flourish. At PayPal, I get to select our law firms, and I make sure to select firms that promote and celebrate diversity. When I was looking for a firm to represent PayPal for a particular matter, one of the firms that showed up to pitch us didn’t have a single woman sitting at the table. When I asked if they had any women at their firm, they said “Of course we do!” But then I asked where they were. Until we make people think about this – and we can make people think about this in the way we choose to spend our money – we won’t drive change.

 

It’s important to realize that having a diverse workforce isn’t just a nice to have, it’s a smart business decision. We’ve all heard the stats about the power of diversity – you get better results when you have a diverse workforce and have thought of every creative angle. So I use my voice during promotions and performance reviews and I encourage the women on my team to challenge the gender bias. And when I first came on board, I was able to make some hires that increased the diversity on my team. As an executive at PayPal – I have no problem using my voice and my spending power to push for more diversity, both within the company and externally.

 

I have two mentors. The first one was the Chairman of the board of my last company and he taught me the valuable lesson of not putting artificial barriers or pressures on myself.

 

When I decided I needed to take a temporary break from the corporate world, I told my mentor I was going to take three months off before looking for something new. He told me not to set a time limit or artificial pressures, and that I would know when I was ready to go back to work. During my time off I realized that after more than 15 years of work, I needed to decompress, I needed more time. I truly believe that if it weren’t for his advice, I wouldn’t be here at PayPal today. I got some great offers early on in the process, I heard from really aggressive headhunters telling me that if I stayed out of the workforce for too long I wouldn’t be an attractive candidate. I can’t say it wasn’t scary turning down jobs when I didn’t have anything lined up, but I kept going back to his advice and had confidence that I would find the right role when I was ready.

 

My second mentor was a great role model and support when I was pregnant. She was a working mother and had great perspective about being a mother and an executive in the workplace. She helped me make decisions – from professional decisions to deciding between a nanny and daycare. It was so helpful having someone who had gone through what I was going through, to bounce ideas off of and get advice from.

 

Take a job that you are really passionate about, a job that you have fun at. I hate the word “work.” For me, it’s about serving a mission or a purpose you believe in. If you have that formula, you will invariably succeed. If I knew this back then, I would never have worked at a law firm – for me that was work. I had set an artificial metric for myself – many of us do. I thought I have to do this in order to get to that. But that’s not the case.

 

I always wish I had become a medical doctor. If I had medical skills, I would be in Africa right now helping kids in need. I had my honeymoon in Rwanda and one of the things that really stood out to me was the kids -- they had nothing, but were happy.