Reddit hires Ellen Pao, the Kleiner Perkins partner who sued for discrimination

Reddit has hired Ellen Pao, the former Kleiner Perkins partner who sued the firm for sexual harrasment in May.

A source said that Pao has enjoyed a close relationship with Reddit CEO Yishan Wong and has been working on a part-time basis for the company. But she has formally agreed to join this week. She’ll be helping the company build strategic partnerships.

We have reached out to Reddit for comment on the hire. Meanwhile, the company posted a blog post on the hire this morning. It reads:

A long-time lurker, Ellen comes to us by way of a long, adventurous career spanning venture capital, business development, law, and electrical engineering.  She’s been a formal and informal advisor to Reddit for more than a year, and recently decided to finally join us full-time.  She’ll be working on helping us build strategic partnerships that benefit the community.

Here’s Ellen in her own words: “I grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, raised by enginerds on Star Wars, computers and books. I live in San Francisco, via New York City, Boston and Hong Kong. I’ve worked with dozens of tech companies, traveling to eleven countries on five continents, to help build a variety of consumer and business platform companies. “My favorite subreddits are /r/IAmA and /r/pareidolia (I like people even when they’re not real). Being part of a community of people who care is inspiring and energizing. reddit has so much to offer so many people, and I’m excited to find partners to help make reddit even more awesome.”

The past few months (and Monday) have been a time of unprecedented growth for reddit, and we’d like to thank everyone who’s reading this for your support, whether that happens to be by contributing interesting new posts, buying ads or reddit gold, sharing reddit with your friends, or moderating one of the thousands and thousands of unique subreddits.

Verily, through all our efforts, reddit shall continue on its course to its destiny uninterrupted.