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Ep 115: From Career Break to CLO: How Shanti Ariker Rebuilt Her Legal Career
44 Plays1 day ago
In this episode of The Abstract, host Tyler Finn speaks with Shanti Ariker, Chief Legal Officer at JFrog, about her unconventional journey from taking a six-year career break to leading legal teams at Salesforce, Twilio, Zendesk, and beyond. Shanti shares lessons on reinvention, resilience, and empathetic leadership — from returning to work as a contracts manager to navigating billion-dollar acquisitions and leading through global crises.
Whether you’re building your in-house career or leading a team, this conversation offers practical insights on growth, adaptability, and finding purpose in every chapter.
Read detailed transcript: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-115
Topics
Introduction and career overview – 00:00
Stepping away from full-time work and returning after six years – 02:41
Re-entering the legal workforce in Canada and taking a step back – 05:47
Breaking into Salesforce through networking and early contributions – 12:50
Building the Salesforce Canada legal team and launching pro bono work – 15:30
Becoming General Counsel at salesforce.org and leading through learning – 19:20
Innovative legal models and lessons from the salesforce.org structure – 22:17
Transitioning back to for-profit legal roles and rebuilding GC credentials – 24:56
GC role at Zendesk: From steady start to activist investors and take-private – 33:44
Managing governance, communication, and morale during high-stakes transitions – 37:35
Joining JFrog and leading through the Israel crisis – 43:03
Evolving leadership style through personal and professional challenges – 47:07
Rapid-fire Questions – 51:45
Connect with us:
Shanti Ariker - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanti-ariker/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues. Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Choosing Legal Specialties and Early Career Experiences
00:00:00
Speaker
You know, I was really nervous that I would fail and also that I had to pick one type of law. And if I didn't pick the right one, it would be a disaster. And i originally was very sure that I wanted to do environmental law until I spent a summer associate physician one half summer at um a U.S. PERG and ah doing Clean Water Act review. So boring.
00:00:28
Speaker
And so I realized then and there that I couldn't just do administrative type law and I needed to do something else. But, you know, I've dabbled in a little bit of everything. And I think if I would have known at the beginning, what I tell law students is, you know, you may have an idea about your career that it's going to go in this one direction that you you may. Some people might know I want to be a litigator. That's all I want to do. But I tried litigation. I didn't love it.
00:00:53
Speaker
Having the background has been helpful as a GC. You know, i I've tried a little bit of everything and I think that that makes you a valuable general counsel. And also it makes you more empathetic for all the people on your team.
00:01:08
Speaker
So if there's one thing I want people to take away is that, you know, just because you're doing something today doesn't mean you have to be doing it tomorrow. You might need to create a path for how do you get to the other thing that you're really looking to do.
00:01:21
Speaker
but um You know, and that's through networking, talking to people, educating yourself, getting certifications or what have you. But and but you can do so much with a legal degree, whether it's in the legal team or outside the legal team.
Introduction to Shanti Eriker's Career Journey
00:01:47
Speaker
When you build a legal career across startups, nonprofits, and public companies, you pick up more than just technical skills. You learn adaptability, leadership under pressure, and how to carve your own lane in spaces that weren't always designed for you.
00:02:07
Speaker
Today on The Abstract, I'm joined by Shanti Eriker, Chief Legal Officer at JFrog, a NASDAQ-listed Israeli software company.
00:02:18
Speaker
Shanti's path has taken her from in-house roles at E-Trade to leadership roles at Salesforce.org, Autodesk. Twilio, Zendesk, and now at JFrog with a lot of reinvention, resilience, and intentionality along the way.
Balancing Family and Career: A Six-Year Hiatus and Return
00:02:38
Speaker
We're going to dive into how she's built a career defined by adaptability, pivots, and finding leadership in complex, high-stakes environments.
00:02:51
Speaker
With that, Shanti, welcome to this episode of The Abstract. Thank you so much. And it's great to be here. And I think you were a referral from someone, one of my previous guests. I can't remember if it was Ron Bell or someone like that. Um, was so I, I love that. Maybe you'll have some recommendations for me after we were, if you have a good time after we record together.
00:03:12
Speaker
and Yeah. I think it was Dana Rao. Oh, it was Dana Rao. Yes. That's a great episode. Um, folks should listen to that one if they haven't yet. Um, I'm actually, I'm hoping to have Dana back for a part two at some point this year because he has so much to talk about. Awesome. And you do as well.
00:03:30
Speaker
Okay. So, you know, I don't want to give sort of like short shrift to your early career, but one of the things that I think is really interesting you know, you know You spent like eight years working across law firms, E-Trade, startups. You're in California and Wisconsin. And something that I think is unusual, especially when you talk to folks who end up then really sort of like at the pinnacle as a CLO at some point, is you stepped away from full-time work for six years to focus on your family and raising your children. Yeah.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, let's explore that. it Was that a tough decision for you to make at the time? Were were you nervous about that? You know, if you would have asked me when I was a first or second year, do you plan on taking time off, having kids, getting married, et cetera? I would have said no.
00:04:21
Speaker
nope and i And in fact, I think people ask me that question. I said, well, that's never going to happen. And I don't cook and I don't do anything and I don't know how to do it. I don't plan to learn. And so it was ah huge leap of faith and it was also a major change. And part of it was i fell in love and, you know, things change.
00:04:41
Speaker
um My husband, who's still my husband today, After almost 25 years, ah you know, he we needed to move for his career. And right I never thought about having to do that before, having to put somebody else's career ahead of my own.
00:04:59
Speaker
But I did it. And then I had children and, you know, they had special some special health needs for a while. And it just didn't make sense between all the moving that we did for my husband's career and for the kids needs that I go back to work.
00:05:18
Speaker
So I took a back seat and being the type A person that I am, I continued to learn and do different things as a non-working mom.
00:05:29
Speaker
And I did learn how to cook and how to, you know, bake and, And do different things with um the PTA and other and and use my skills in other ways that I wasn't um even aware that I could do ah you know, when I when I took off from the working world. So. hmm.
00:05:50
Speaker
I would say that the thing that I learned the most is that the skills that you bring to the table as ah you know somebody that you're working, and those are the same skills you need as a parent.
00:06:04
Speaker
Networking with the other moms has always been helpful. um and in fact, that's how I got my job at Salesforce in Canada, which we'll talk about in a little while, was through a mom's group.
00:06:15
Speaker
I actually, we did a prep call. I didn't know that. That's great. We will talk about that. um I mean, this is not foreign to me. My mom was a kindergarten teacher before she had me. And I don't think any of that training to be a kindergarten teacher went to waste whatsoever because she, you know, spent her time with me and my sister and like already knew how to work with kids and, yeah.
00:06:39
Speaker
I think, you know, I think it's a it's it's a great decision and it's a different sort of life experience, but not an easier path by any stretch of the imagination. um When you were thinking about reentering the workforce, what was that process like?
00:06:56
Speaker
How did you decide that it made sense um for you? I guess also, you know, from a sort of like wider lens perspective, do you think there are things that we should do?
00:07:08
Speaker
A lot of folks who are listening to this are leaders at companies to improve that process for parents who might want to reenter the workforce. Yeah. Yeah. So first, um when I thought about reentering the workforce, I really i needed to sit down with my husband and talk about it because things were going to have to change, you know. um And we did it in phases. I had to take a series of exams because we were then living in Canada. And order to requalify, i first had to take these prerequisites before I was even allowed to think about sitting and writing the bar there. Mm hmm.
00:07:46
Speaker
So in order to do that, I hired somebody to oversee the kids and to pick them up from school. and that allowed them to start to see something a little bit different than they were used to and get comfortable with being around other people to watch them. And after that, I felt more comfortable as well. But I i really didn't feel...
00:08:07
Speaker
good about a decision about going back to work because I was I knew how I was as a as a lawyer that I wouldn't be able to go back into work without really um giving you know so much of myself. And then how was I going to be able to be a mom?
00:08:25
Speaker
ah The mom that I wanted to be and also the worker that I wanted to be and and think about my career as I wanted to do. So i really i sat down with my husband. I talked about, you know, here's what it's really going to be like when I go back to work. And are you for that? Are you willing to have that?
00:08:43
Speaker
be something that we consider as a family, because it's not just a decision about me. At the end of the day, it's going to affect all four of us. And so how will how will that, you know, how will you add to that?
00:08:57
Speaker
What's the equation for our family? What kind of help do we need? And that sort of thing. So we ultimately decided that we would, um ah all agreed that we, I should go back to work. And we started out actually with um just an afterschool care program, but you know, those programs require you to be on time to pick up your kids, for you like a dollar or five or $10 every minute you're late to incentivize you to be on time.
00:09:28
Speaker
And after the third time of it didn't work out well for me, would to to up the ante and get, you know, full time helper, um which is a little bit easier to do in Canada because of the sponsorships that you can get for visa, etc.
00:09:46
Speaker
And um so I did realize and I did have to go through some some differences in order to figure out what the right, you know, help was going to look like for me. And that was affordable and and obtainable um where I was living.
00:10:00
Speaker
But, you know, I think so. I think it's a really good question.
Networking and Career Progression in Canada
00:10:04
Speaker
i always tell, especially, you know, young people that I'm speaking to and lecture or especially young women, but anybody who wants to have life outside of their firm or their or their, you know, their in-house position that I took six years off because I want people to know it's possible to take that time off and still get ahead.
00:10:26
Speaker
um But it wasn't it wasn't a, you know, done deal by any means. And i did need a lot of help along the way, not just from helpers, not just for my husband, but also from people who gave me opportunities because I went and told them about what I was looking for and that I needed their help to get there.
00:10:46
Speaker
and And so that really was something that I constantly advocate for people to to be open about their their career aspirations at any time. I think if you're asking, you know, what people can do to help people who've been out of the workforce, I think...
00:11:04
Speaker
It's, you know, networking with people, taking calls. I have gotten calls from people even lately. you know, I've been out of the workforce for a few years. What should I consider doing different? What should my resume look like? What courses should I fully consider? Yeah.
00:11:20
Speaker
You know, can can we have ah almost like an intern program for people that come back into the workforce? Why not? You know, yeah. But what's the difference? Because yeah interns come in without knowing really much about anything in the middle of college, don't really know how to work in an office.
00:11:38
Speaker
Somebody who hasn't worked for years may have the same issues, you know, haven't used Haven't used Google suites. They used Microsoft only or, you know, things have changed.
00:11:48
Speaker
haven't used ChatGPT or whatever it is. And they need to up level their skills. They may need to just know what the differences are. We've automated a lot of processes nowadays. We use Slack. You know, there's a lot of things we're expected to know how to use.
00:12:06
Speaker
that you wouldn't even have any idea about if you weren't. And then don't even get me started on missioning and cybersecurity and all the things that people are looking. You might not be focused on, you know, those kinds of issues. So I think there's a lot we can do to educate people who want to come back into the workforce.
00:12:26
Speaker
Last sort of question on on this, you know, when you came back into the workforce, I think i it was it was sort of what folks might describe as like, you have to take one step back sometimes to take two steps forward. Like you re-entered as a contracts manager, as opposed to as an associate general counsel or reporting straight to the C-suite or um what was your mindset during that transition and how did you make it happen?
00:12:56
Speaker
So, you know, after being off for six years, we had moved to Canada and I had taken the bar and a series of exams before that. So I was very proud of myself that I got and re-qualified, but it was 2009. And to be practical, you know, there were lots of layoffs and people who were going to get jobs and um you know to be If I wanted to work, I had to be willing to put my foot in the door anywhere and wasn't as focused on title or salary as I was on getting Canadian background and and feeling like I had some sort of stamp of approval from being in Canada. I wasn't sure how long we would live in Canada. We ended up living there for eight years.
00:13:37
Speaker
um But, you know, I wasn't sure what the future would bring. And I wanted to have the opportunity to do something with my career. And i needed to take some sort of first step. So i i decided it was the right thing to do. And i wanted to, once I got my foot in the door, I tried to prove myself that I was more than a contracts manager. Not to say that managers have anything wrong with them, but I had that background.
00:14:00
Speaker
Sure. And I had the the bar exam and I wanted to be able to do more. And so, you know, I did whatever I could to raise my hand to do additional things in order to to try to get more responsibility and to be able to earn that council title back again.
00:14:18
Speaker
i You ended up becoming the first lawyer that Salesforce hired in Canada as as they were growing. How'd you make that happen? I mean, that seems like a big inflection point for you, one, because of that, but also because of what comes next, which we'll talk about.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so back in 2011, which was when I was hired, Salesforce was not well-known like it is today. It was still a smallish company, under $2 billion in revenue.
00:14:47
Speaker
yeah you know So imagine, that was a long time ago, right? um Almost 15 years ago. And so, um first of all... yeah Getting in my foot in the door was difficult. I did try through people contacts that I had in California, but the that didn't really help me. and and And I had somewhat given up on the role when i went to a book club that was hosted that was being hosted at my house for these moms that I had met through this this mom's club.
00:15:21
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:15:24
Speaker
and somebody who worked at salesforce in the past happened to be there and said you know there's this new role i know you were interested in salesforce and why don't you apply and i told her well i did apply and you know i went sent it to all these people who sent you to the general counsel in california But she said, well, you send it to me. Send me your resume. I'll make sure that you get seen. And I said, I'm sorry, but I don't know how that's going to help. You know, I think all these people who yeah I finally said to her, like, you know, why? Why would this make a difference? And she said, well, I'll give it to my husband. And I said, who's your husband? And she said, oh, he runs the Toronto office.
00:16:07
Speaker
Should have been my first question. But you know that and that only got me an interview. But then. Sure. My foot in the door through the experience I'd already had and the fact that I did know how to do a lot of the agreements they were talking about and the fact that I'd been working already in Canada helped as well. So if I had just had the U.S. experience, I'm really not sure I would have gotten the job.
Growing Roles at Salesforce and Pro Bono Initiatives
00:16:32
Speaker
In fact, the guy that hired me told me, you you know, he wouldn't have hired me without that Canadian experience.
00:16:37
Speaker
Once you were in Salesforce, I think as folks often want to do, right, you want to continue to sort of grow. um And, you know, you might have advocated for yourself and gotten a little bit more than you you bargained for um in eventually building Salesforce's pro bono program, becoming the GC of the foundation, taking on Salesforce.org.
00:17:02
Speaker
Talk us through that that process, ah how you started to sort of expand your remit within an organization like Salesforce and what you were proud of accomplishing.
00:17:13
Speaker
So first I came in as an individual contributor, but within a few weeks I was already given managerial. And actually when I interviewed, i was told, you know, maybe we should have gone a different way. and We might, I almost had to basically re-interview explaining why I could be a manager.
00:17:30
Speaker
So before the job was even given to me, it was almost taken away. But i I managed to convince this um deputy GC that I was ah management material. And so when I first started law, I hired somebody within a few weeks.
00:17:47
Speaker
And it was like the blind leading the blind because I still didn't really know what the job was. And I was already training somebody here. um But quickly, I learned a lot um and I was able to ah successfully oversee this person who's also a really great lawyer. So easy it was easy.
00:18:05
Speaker
um and I wanted to manage more people. And eventually I was given the ability to manage a whole team um from ah which oversaw commercial lawyers in all of Canada and then south southward. So from Chicago on down through Texas.
00:18:21
Speaker
and so um And then eventually it became larger and included some of the West, some of the East, etc. um And ah when i decided I wanted to move back to the U.S. after eight years in Canada, i was given the opportunity to oversee the entire Western region plus the Central. um Eventually I traded Canada for LATAM.
00:18:46
Speaker
And in South America. um But when I got to the US, I had been doing a lot with ah charitable foundations and and in in the Toronto office. And I really wanted to continue that. The other thing I didn't mention while I was taking the six years off, I became the head of the PTA for the school.
00:19:07
Speaker
i oversaw the redoing a park in my neighborhood and and a bunch of things that I did kind of in my free time. Yeah. So. You know, wanting to be involved in the community and also having done pro bono when I was an associate in law firms early in my career, I really wanted to bring that um ability to do that and work with people from across the spectrum and give access to justice to people um in the you know and throughout the department. So I went to the person who oversaw the foundation and I said, know, I'd love to start this pro bono.
00:19:42
Speaker
opportunity and she said, great, nobody else has brought it up. So go out, go for it Then I spoke with the general counsel and she gave me the green light and we went forward with it.
00:19:54
Speaker
um And it was very successful. We tried to do a lot of yeah local projects, but also global projects and partnering with law firms and aid societies. And I continued to run it for about four years.
00:20:07
Speaker
um That got me some face time with the general counsel who i went to regularly and would say, you know, hey, I feel a little bit behind in my career because I took these six years off.
00:20:19
Speaker
And, um you know, having shown her what I could do on some of these side projects, she began giving me more side projects. And one day she showed up in my office and she said, um i really need you to look into this issue, this tax issue with the foundation.
00:20:36
Speaker
And I said, let me stop you right there. I'm not a corporate lawyer. I'm a commercial lawyer. what up the commercial team in case you didn't realize that. And she said, oh, I know exactly what you are.
00:20:48
Speaker
And now you're my nonprofit lawyer because you had up the pro bono. And so, oh, OK, well, I don't I literally said to her, I don't know anything about that. She said, I have faith in you and you'll figure it out.
00:21:03
Speaker
That's good leadership right there. so And, you know, really, i had been ah harping on on these issues of, you know, I don't have anything exciting. I'm doing the same thing over and over. I want to learn more. I want to do more. I want to be a leader.
00:21:18
Speaker
She came to me with these opportunities. is And then when I said, hey, I don't know what ah to do, she said, you'll figure it out. And so i started working on a project for her related to the foundation and the dot org. And well they called me and said, we'd like you to be the general counsel.
00:21:34
Speaker
And I said, whoa, wait, I don't think I can go anywhere because I've been helping the general counsel and I don't want to leave her in lurch. And so I said, no, I'm not doing it.
00:21:45
Speaker
And I contacted her and I said, oh they called me and this is what happened. And she said, Shanti, how do you think they called you? do you think they came out of a hat?
00:21:57
Speaker
I wanted them to call you. And I was like, oh, you know, it did this bond on me that she was pulling some of the strings and helping doing the things that I'd asked her to do. So, of course, I ended up taking the position.
00:22:13
Speaker
nothing and learning so much. And a lot of it was just things that were not in within my expertise. And I did speak to her before taking the job about my lack of knowledge and how can i you know, what are the things I can do to shore up the knowledge I need, how i can work with outside counsel, who can I work with on her team to come up with Some safety net on, you know, learning learning some of the areas that I wasn't as familiar with.
00:22:43
Speaker
And she sat next to me in my first few board meetings and ah whispered in my ear when I needed to say, ah Can I get a motion for this? Because I had no idea what how to do anything. So, you know, i i i really always thank Amy Weaver, who had been the general counsel, then the CLO, then the CFO of Salesforce, and today is CEO of a ah large relief organization. Mm-hmm.
00:23:11
Speaker
im yeah for for really pushing me ah you know beyond my comfort zone and giving me the opportunities that i could then you know take and and prove myself with it sounds like that was a really formative sort of experience for you in terms of feeling like you know you could be the gc you could take this on and i'm A couple sort of questions for you on that.
00:23:39
Speaker
you know I mean, Salesforce.org, the foundation, this is a unique sort of model environment. Do you feel like that has continued to shape your approach to to lawyering?
00:23:50
Speaker
And you know how did you eventually decide it was time to to move on to the next thing? Yeah, the the model is very innovative. We were a social enterprise, salesforce.org. Salesforce.org was a 501c4, which means that it can actually sell.
00:24:06
Speaker
um The foundation was the granting entity for the most part. yeah And so it was a very unique um ah model that actually has been ah replicated in things like open AI.
00:24:21
Speaker
g Not something that I would necessarily recommend because it fought with danger and risk um with some of the things that we've seen play out in the media with open AI or things that you know we also saw concerns around.
00:24:37
Speaker
um and also reabsorbing, which is ultimately what happened to Salesforce.org, reabsorbing it into a for-profit company is no easy feat either. You need approval from the attorney general the state you're operating in, things like that. so um But but you know back to your question about looking at this from an innovative perspective, yes, I think, you know, that really was an out of the standard model. And it did make us think a lot about what else could we do differently? and And I'm constantly saying this about, you know, just today I had a meeting with some people on my team talking about innovation and saying, it doesn't just apply to the company, it applies to all of us.
00:25:21
Speaker
How can we do something different in our own team that's innovative That's groundbreaking, whether it's use of AI, whether it's some other thing that allows us to be more pragmatic and less administrative in our day to day. And it's also around, you know, what can you see as a lawyer operating within your company where, you know, we often see all the different broken pieces and people will say, oh, yeah, we have this issue. But, you know, legal often say, oh we we have an idea about how to fix that.
00:25:55
Speaker
Yes. so Why can't we raise our hands and say that? I recently did that with an issue that we had, ah went to the CEO and he said, that's a great idea. And we we and ended up implementing it. It had nothing to do with the legal team.
00:26:09
Speaker
he um As you left... Salesforce, as you mentioned, sort of salesforce.org becomes, right, like reacquired or brought back into Salesforce.
Transition from Nonprofit to For-Profit Legal Roles
00:26:23
Speaker
You decided it was time to move on. um You know, how did you decide what you were going to look for for next um in your career? You've been GC now, so...
00:26:35
Speaker
Well, you know, I i really, i talked to Amy again. She'd been ah really a great mentor to me and a sponsor. And, uh, you know, I told her, look, I, I've thought a little bit about what I want to do in the future. And I really would love your job, not your type of job.
00:26:55
Speaker
And so what, how do I get there? What do you think? And, you know, her, the easiest ah avenue would have been to go to a pre IPO company that I thought was going to go public and toil away until it went public.
00:27:09
Speaker
Sure. But I early on went to a ah private company that was supposed to go public in the dot bomb era, and I ended up laying off the entire company. So I've been was always very allergic to doing that again.
00:27:22
Speaker
So it wasn't an option for me that I wanted to take that risk um level of risk right now. So I said, you know, what else can I do? So she started to.
00:27:34
Speaker
network, know, have me network with different people, think about informational interviews. And I really came to find that being at Salesforce.org and foundation were great. The fact that I had the general counsel title was great, but I was branded as a nonprofit lawyer. Sure.
00:27:52
Speaker
but that I wasn't really running ah nonprofit legal department because we were doing deals with customers and partners. We were creating new, tech and products and all the things that you would do as a GC of a private company or, ah you know, a company that's for profit.
00:28:12
Speaker
And so I realized I needed to go back into a for profit company to prove that I was still in that world. So and I realized that going straight from being a ah nonprofit GC to for profit public company GC was amazing.
00:28:30
Speaker
unreasonable and unreasonable kind of idea. So I thought, you know, I'm going to have to take a couple of steps. So one of the steps was to go to a bigger company like Autodesk oversee a direct sales, commercial sales, uh, organization and ah customer support. So they had recently undergone a change where they were starting to sell more subscriptions than licenses and we're moving more into the cloud and also moving from just a straight reseller,
00:29:03
Speaker
ah ah model to more of a direct sales model. So both of them were very new. h So we had to change a lot of the terms and conditions and the ways we operated.
00:29:15
Speaker
And so overseeing this team um allowed me to, you know, get my footing back, get up to date on things. Also do this new, you know, change from license to um subscription because being at Salesforce, we were, you know, native to the cloud. We didn't have those.
00:29:32
Speaker
So it interesting to see the pivots they had done on their business model and their operating um model. So that was interesting. But at the end of the day, having been the GC running the department and then overseeing this small little part of the department was a little bit, it did feel like a step back. And so when found out that Twilio was hiring for both commercial and corporate, a deputy GC, I raised my hand for it, although I hadn't been at Autodesk for very long.
00:30:05
Speaker
And, um you know, I really did love Autodesk. It was a great company, great products, really great legal department. um And I loved my boss, but I just felt like I wanted to do more. But he the minute I told him, he said, we knew you weren't going to be told very long. Yeah.
00:30:24
Speaker
You were happy to turn to you for as long as you were. um So I left and I went to Twilio and I oversaw both the commercial, which at that point felt very comfortable doing, and then the corporate, which was more of a stretch because I had done a lot of corporate work around subsidiary management when I was at Salesforce.org, but I hadn't done the public company reporting or to any real degree or anything.
00:30:52
Speaker
or financings and things like that. So all those things I i accomplished in a very short order at Twilio. We did five or six M&As, including segment, which was like four and a half billion.
00:31:04
Speaker
We did a billion dollar financing. We did all kinds of different things. And so um I got a lot of a lot of um experience, and it was exactly what I had been looking for to fill my background in.
00:31:19
Speaker
And it's not that, you know, I say that this was the approach that I take. Everybody has a different story on how they got to GC, and I'm sure you hear them all from being on the podcast.
00:31:30
Speaker
And some people don't ever fill that in and feel comfortable. I really wanted to To feel like I understood a little bit about Reg SK and FD and all the things that you typically handle as the GC. But I think the secret sauce that I've continued to have is that commercial background and really be able to pick up a deal from my team, any escalations and instantly understand because it's so many years I did practice.
00:31:57
Speaker
Commercial law. um So I, ah you know, eventually got a call from a recruiter about the Zendesk position. And it was really like, wait a minute, I just, you know, I hadn't been at Twilio all that long. we were in the middle of the pandemic.
00:32:16
Speaker
And we had been a pandemic darling. So, you know, our my my my team grew by 20 people during the pandemic because it was wow just, it was an explosive growth.
00:32:27
Speaker
And we were doing all this M&A, et cetera. um But when I, you know, i had been plodding along, here's what I will do in order to become a public company GC.
00:32:39
Speaker
And Zendesk was a very well thought of, um software company in, it you know, the B2B software space. And it seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I couldn't pass up at least talking to them.
00:32:53
Speaker
And they moved so fast within like week from month I had an offer. And I was like, whoa. um And, you know, so i i thought about it for probably like five minutes. You know, first up, like, well, I have a, you know, I have a decent job at Twilio. Twilio's doing really well, but I've always wanted to be a public company GC, and now I have an offer on the table to do that.
00:33:17
Speaker
we say no to that, and they don't come around every day. Until 2021, where I do think that they did work coming around every day because there's so much, everybody and their mother was becoming a general counsel, but I didn't know that in December of 2020 when I took the position.
00:33:35
Speaker
yeah And I don't think I would have done anything differently because, you know, I think Zendesk was and continues to be a great company, great name in the industry. And I learned so much from that job because of everything that happened right after, you know, within six months of joining.
00:33:53
Speaker
I will briefly plug. I had Mark Khan on as a guest probably like a year and a half ago, maybe almost two years ago. We didn't talk.
00:34:04
Speaker
You mentioned the segment acquisition. We didn't talk super in depth about that. That wasn't really the focus of the episode. But we do talk about his personal transition through that and how he got to segment and eventually at the time was an executive recruiter. And if folks like this episode, they might like that one, too. There's ah there's a lot of overlap.
00:34:23
Speaker
in the in the great guests that I'm lucky to get to talk to. Yeah, Mark and I, we had only overlapped by a few months, but it was great to get to know him. and Yeah. and Okay, well, you've started to allude to this, right? So you become GC of Zendesk in in late 2020. There's a proposed acquisition of SurveyMonkey that folks may remember.
00:34:47
Speaker
Some activist investors get involved in the business. Yeah. I've had other folks on to talk deeply about sort of dealing with activist investors. We don't have to talk in depth about that.
00:34:58
Speaker
um But eventually then there's a take private, and like a sort of consortium of PE funds come together and take the business private for a little north of $10 billion.
Challenges at Zendesk as General Counsel
00:35:07
Speaker
dollars This is a big a big deal, right?
00:35:09
Speaker
um How would you describe that whole chapter of your career? Because that sounds like any one of those possible events or any one of those events would be a lot for a GC to deal with.
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah, i like to say that I when I first went to the Berkeley Symposium on Corporate Securities Law, that I felt like I needed a primer on everything they were talking about because I didn't really understand any of it.
00:35:38
Speaker
yeah After being at Zendesk for a few years, I felt like I lived every single thing that everybody spoke about that following year. went from one extreme to the other.
00:35:50
Speaker
a true education. yeah yeah I like to say i got her a PhD in corporate governance at Zendesk. For the first six months, it was very much the standard GC gig, ah learning about the team, getting to know the company, putting in place some different changes and things like that.
00:36:09
Speaker
um But then once we announced the acquisition of Momentum, which was what the company was called at the time, um that owned SurveyMonkey, we immediately had some dissatisfaction in the ranks of our shareholders,
00:36:23
Speaker
And then it got worse and we had invest ah activists and ah we ultimately have received an unsolicited bid. Like so many things happened. had so many board meetings already um that, you know, I learned a lot about how the process works, about proxy solicitation and and all of that.
00:36:45
Speaker
um But then we began a secret process to what's no obviously not secret anymore. um But at the time, it was secret to um sell to explore a sale of the company. And ah we we started to look around at that. We we put that into put the company in play. We had endless amounts of meetings we had, you know, between the momentum and that deal, we did have over 100 board meetings. It was like at least four. Wow.
00:37:15
Speaker
It was pretty crazy, and um and it was really necessary with the number of activists we had, the number of things going on Keeping people up to date was important, and um it was it really was a whirlwind of activity, and we kept joking that every corner case that could possibly happen happened to Yeah.
00:37:41
Speaker
So much so that Wachtell Lippin, who was my principal, selects a deal every year that they teach at Harvard Law School, and they selected Zendesk because it was just so wild, and and I got to teach the class with a... That's incredible. And then they they liked it so much, they asked me to come back and teach at Stanford as well, so I did the same thing at Stanford.
00:38:07
Speaker
That's amazing. I would love to take that course or lecture series or whatever they they do. That's really cool. um I love that phrase turn of phrase, sort of like a PhD in corporate work.
00:38:21
Speaker
You know, 100 board meetings. um I think I hear from a lot of GCs who ask, how do I manage my relationship with the board? As you're going through this, what is the right sort of relationship look like with your CFO, CEO, management team?
00:38:41
Speaker
How do you work together in the right way? Any lessons that you'd have around those sorts of governance dynamics that you would want to share? um Because you have such...
00:38:54
Speaker
practical and comprehensive experience. I think it can get difficult depending on the players and what's going on and and all the different stakes in play.
00:39:05
Speaker
um But as being as transparent as you can with the whole management team, Because if you're not, then people feel like the the rug got pulled out from under them. um You know, as a result, they may not want to stick around.
00:39:20
Speaker
And um I think, you know, the difference in counsel also was apparent in how we kept the board up to date. So in the Momentum deal, we had a special, an executive committee that handled most of the information related to the deal and then we updates to the board but uh walktel's advice was just to have the board involved in every step of the way and i think although it was more difficult to have board meeting after board meeting it was helpful because we didn't need to constantly getting people up to date on what happened in the executive committee mm-hmm I think it also allowed everybody to feel part of the process. And what I offered to we we offered a couple of things. One was um kind of an activism 101 class for anybody who didn't feel comfortable and it wasn't mandatory, but anybody on the board could come.
00:40:17
Speaker
And also the management team, um you know, was provided that same information. And then the other thing was just making sure that people could come to me or anybody, ah you know, on my team to ask no dumb question, you know, so we could feel like they they could, you know, come to the meeting and understand what was happening.
00:40:41
Speaker
Maybe there's another question in there, too. One last sort of question on this, which is, you know, if if there are activist investors in particular, right? I mean, there's publicity around this and there's news coverage. And that's part of that.
00:40:52
Speaker
I don't if i call it a game, but that's part of the strategy that they're playing. right um Things that you learned about you know helping your team and helping the company stay focused and like keeping culture up and in the midst of something that you know you might not want it to be as public of a process as it is, but the folks on the other the shareholders on the other side have a strong incentive to make it very public.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah, so i I was very tied at the hip with my head of comms. Yeah. And we worked very closely together. And things often broke in the Wall Street Journal. And then they would tell us, this is about to hit the paper and online. And do you have a comment? And we would say, we don't even have this letter yet.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah, can you read this? Yeah. Which is crazy. But I think it is very difficult when you're in the midst of such a giant fight like that to keep your culture and to be transparent because you can't you can't be transparent. You can't disclose without disclosing to all your shareholders. So you can't disclose to all your employees. So that became a difficult um and led to some of the decisions we made, like announcing that the deal wasn't going to go through and we were going to remain public.
00:42:10
Speaker
And then then deciding two weeks later to take the deal.
00:42:16
Speaker
Because they wanted to be able to tell the employees, but I think it backfired. So i do think there needs a lot needs to be a lot of thought into what can and can't you say and whether you want to make filings just so that you can talk to your employees.
00:42:31
Speaker
Because if you don't, then you're really your hands are really tied behind your back. um The other thing is, um you know, what what gets put in the press and how much press you get. It's not completely in your control, but how you how you work with, you know, crisis communications firm and maybe taking their advice on things. Sometimes we didn't always, you know, do that. And i think you can pay the price for that.
00:42:57
Speaker
We were lucky. In the fact that while all of this crazy story was going on, there was an even crazier story. So people didn't even necessarily notice us because Twitter was in the middle of ah their own fight.
00:43:13
Speaker
Ah. And that, I can imagine, oh, I remember, was getting lots of press. I recall having a ah meeting with a ah call on a pivotal day with one of my with my lead director, independent director, and to make me feel better, he said, well, I just got off the phone with the another GC who's in the midst of this.
00:43:37
Speaker
we're feeling really bad. And I said, who? And he tells me the name. And I said, oh, you the GC of Twitter. Okay, I feel better. There's always someone who's having a worse day. Perspective, right? and Well, I have a feeling that you're going to be getting a couple calls from public company GCs asking for some free ah free counsel after after this is released. um I mean, how do you follow this up? Right. So like after Zendesk, what was it that drew you to your current role at JFrog?
Joining JFrog Amid Geopolitical Tensions
00:44:10
Speaker
And I mean, something that is different about this is JFrog is an Israeli company. I mean, what was it like stepping into a leadership role at a company where you know have a lot of employees abroad in Israel and and elsewhere?
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah. was something I didn't mention at the beginning is that when I was 18, I moved to Israel and immigrated an immigrant, which is called Making Aliyah. And I stayed there for about five years. So while my Hebrew has become very rusty, i can't speak Hebrew and I do have that background. and And so I was very intrigued when I was, ah you know, notified that there was this position. And I just, I thought, you know, hey, maybe you My worlds are colliding. I've done a lot of um work on boards for israel Israeli organizations, and you know I wanted to check it out. But I really didn't think seriously about it because it's a much smaller company than Zendesk was, and I thought, you know if anything, I'll go to the same size or a larger company.
00:45:12
Speaker
But I was really wowed by the company, the culture, the people. i also knew um the vp of finance, who's now our CFO as well. And so, you know, I had the ability to ask a lot of questions before I joined and um feel like I really knew the company well enough by the time I started there.
00:45:35
Speaker
I guess, um you know, crisis didn't leave you behind, right, in this in this role. um If I remember correctly, you started around September of 2023. And then obviously folks remember, right, like, you know, the attack on October 7th, just a short time afterwards. Yeah.
00:45:56
Speaker
How do you think about, and and my understanding of Israeli companies is that they're very good at this, right? But like, how do you think about sort of business continuity in a situation like that?
00:46:09
Speaker
um and And don't know, did you feel like you were able to draw on a lot of your lessons from Zendesk about leadership in crisis? Or do you feel like you still had things to learn in a situation like like that?
00:46:24
Speaker
I really had things to learn, honestly, because it's just a totally different scenario when it's people's well-being, their health, their stress of that you know of the what what happened on October 7th, the brutal nature attacks and of um sometimes the reactions to those attacks on a global basis. And so...
00:46:50
Speaker
It was extremely stressful for me as a Jew, but also stressful for me as a manager and a leader of of people who I'd only been managing for a month. ah Right. to To be there for them.
00:47:03
Speaker
And some of them had family members who were affected. but you know, everybody in Israel knew somebody who at least something had happened. Some people had narrow escapes from their family members or for themselves.
00:47:16
Speaker
And so, um you know, it was a very stressful time. And and i think my main focus was making sure that we could take whatever burden off of their plates and put it on the plates of the U.S. team while they needed the time.
00:47:34
Speaker
Now, i have to say Israelis are so resilient and so much has happened constantly in Israel that they have to be, but it doesn't mean that they want to be. But often work is a good um distraction from what's happening around you. And I'm sure constantly in shock.
00:47:53
Speaker
um by how much they're willing to do work even in the middle of missile attacks by Iran. i People were working on documents on my team. that's that I would not be doing that myself, but I understand that, I don't know maybe you don't know how you would react until you're in a situation like that, or you've experienced that many times over and over.
00:48:14
Speaker
yeah um I'm curious if you sort of like look back and reflect, you know, helping lead these companies through either different crises or or sort of um different problem sets too.
00:48:29
Speaker
Do you feel like your approach to leading teams and and leadership and being on an executive team has evolved over time?
Leadership Insights and Personal Projects
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah. I'm sure it has evolved. I mean, I'm more mature every year.
00:48:44
Speaker
Let's call it that. um And, you know, i I've been through a lot of different things in my life and I try to be as empathetic as I can. I'm not always able to be. and. and You know, you try to be both pragmatic and empathetic um for the business and for the people um and, you know, see it from different different sides of things, right? It's it's not always easy.
00:49:12
Speaker
um Sometimes you have to make hard decisions, but i do try to think through all those different aspects, not just the legality of the situation. Sure. um one of the things that I've enjoyed is you write a newsletter on LinkedIn.
00:49:27
Speaker
um And i also understand that you have written or or you're working on a memoir as well. um So tell us a little bit about both of those. And then I'm also really curious, like, you know, what drove you to want to start to to write, um share your story more publicly,
00:49:48
Speaker
ah you know I mean, I have this, right? I think that you get better, like the more that you practice, the more you make it a habit or routine, right? That you see how it accrues over time. um Yeah. ah Tell us about both of these projects and and what your experience has been with them.
00:50:05
Speaker
Sure. So I started in-house lawyering and beyond in January, kind of a little bit as a challenge to myself. Could I actually do a biweekly newsletter? At first, I thought, there's no way. How do i have time to do this? But I kept seeing in various um organizations that I belong to the same questions coming up over and over. And I saw that, you know, as I as I'm um getting on in my years and I see new people coming in. The same questions keep being asked over and over.
00:50:35
Speaker
And I thought, well, I have a lot of the answers. maybe Maybe not all the answers, and maybe there's a new way to do things that I can learn as well. So a combination of wanting to ah continue to network with people and different um you know people that are just coming up People, know, I always like to be meeting new people.
00:50:54
Speaker
um ah Many people that I know are retiring. I want to have the access to people that are in the midst of their careers. um And I love to teach.
00:51:05
Speaker
And I also I've been having fun writing and I wanted to write and a newsletter that was a little snarky. um I like the tone personally. It it feels very authentic, let's say.
00:51:20
Speaker
and i no i ah People, you know if you're reading an article about you know the do's and don'ts of something, you get a little bored sometimes when you're scrolling through. and I thought it would be more fun um and more engaging. So, so far I've gotten good feedback and I've been able to to keep it going and that's been great. um But I have been...
00:51:41
Speaker
You know, my journey to start writing my memoir started about six or seven years ago. And i won't bore you with all the details, but, you know, um it's been a long journey of learning about the publishing industry and whether I want to self-publish or traditional publish. I'd like to plan on traditionally publishing.
00:52:00
Speaker
um And I'm, you know, making strides towards that. I have a final manuscript. I've had to learn how to write a book proposal. So I've been working on all of these areas.
00:52:13
Speaker
um And it's been another thing to learn and very interesting and, you know, having to come at it. ah You know, it doesn't matter how much I've done in my legal career. this is a whole different ballgame. So absolutely. It's been very, very interesting, humbling. um And I just I really enjoy writing. So I'm going to keep doing it. I've now been writing some short stories and um getting those published little by little as well.
00:52:41
Speaker
That's fantastic. ah I hope to see it on a shelf near me at Barnes and Noble sometime. And I understand the publishing industry takes a while from some friends who've written books, but maybe by like, you know, early 2026, it'll be on a shelf somewhere. That would be fantastic.
00:52:57
Speaker
and love post yeah As we start to wrap up, Shanti, I've got some traditional closing questions that I like to ask my guests. and my guess I want to ask a few of you.
00:53:09
Speaker
um My first one for you is what your favorite part of your day to day at JFrog is. Well, I guess every day is really different, but I really, you know, if you would have asked me a few years ago, would you really enjoy going into the office? i would have said no, but you i really do enjoy, we come in three days a week at JFrog and I really love sitting down with my team at lunch, i'm talking to people every day, sitting, you know meeting people in the hallway and all the celebrations that we have at JFrog. It's just a lot of fun.
00:53:42
Speaker
the The flip side, I think this is funny, though. you know Do you have a professional pet peeve? Maybe this could be the subject of one of your newsletters. i really get annoyed when people like think it's funny to say that the legal department is the department of no. yeah.
00:54:01
Speaker
I hear that a lot. I've worked so hard to be a solution minded person and to to hammer that home to my team. But people still often will say it's stuck in legal when it's not necessarily stuck in legal or where it's stuck in legal because legal has been given information from the security team that we can't agree to or something like that. So we tend to get.
00:54:24
Speaker
um, bear the brunt of a lot of these, um, these stale, you know, why things stall. Yes. Um, I don't think you're alone in being frustrated by that, uh, perception, which i think oftentimes is, is wrong. As you mentioned, I mean, legal is one of the most cross-functional teams, um, and often sees solutions that others don't.
00:54:48
Speaker
Um, um, My last question for you, Shanti, my traditional closing question for my guests, it's if you could look back on your career and think about maybe when you were a young lawyer just getting started, something that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then.
Career Flexibility and the Value of a Legal Degree
00:55:09
Speaker
You know, I was really nervous that I would fail and also that I had to pick one type of law. And if I didn't pick the right one, it would be a disaster. And i originally was very sure that I wanted to do environmental law until I spent a summer associate position one half summer are at a U.S. PIRG and ah doing Clean Water Act ah review.
00:55:35
Speaker
so boring. And so I realized then and there that I couldn't just do administrative type law and I needed to do something else. But, you know, I've dabbled in a little bit of everything. And I think if I would have known at the beginning, what I tell law students is, you know, you may have an idea about your career that it's going to go in this one direction that you you may. Some people might know I want to be a litigator. That's all I want to do. But I tried litigation. I didn't love it.
00:56:03
Speaker
Having the background has been helpful as ah GC. You know, i I've tried a little bit of everything, and I think that that makes you a valuable general counsel. And also, it makes you more empathetic for all the people on your team.
00:56:18
Speaker
So if there's one thing I would want people to take away is that, you know, just because you're doing something today doesn't mean you have to be doing it tomorrow. You might need to create a path for how do you get to the other thing that you're really looking to do.
00:56:31
Speaker
But, um you know, and that's through networking, talking to people, educating yourself, getting certifications or what have you. But fun but you can do so much with a legal degree, whether it's in the legal team or outside the legal team.
00:56:49
Speaker
I think that's a lesson that will resonate with um folks across our audience, right? Whether they're students, associates, um or folks who are more senior and have been working in the law for even a couple of decades in some cases. ah This has been an absolute pleasure, Shanti. Thanks so much for joining me.
00:57:09
Speaker
Thanks so much for having me. It was fun. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of The Abstract. And we hope to see you next time.