Porter Gale Becomes Reddit’s First Female Board Member

Reddit has appointed Personal Capital chief marketing officer Porter Gale to its board of directors, the company announced Tuesday. Gale is Reddit’s first female board member, and her appointment coincides with the departure of longtime board member and Founders Fund general partner Keith Rabois.

“Porter has extensive experience building bold, fast-growing companies that put their customers and users first,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman in a statement. “We look forward to the insights and experience Porter will bring to the board, as Reddit continues to pursue its mission of bringing community and belonging to everyone.”

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Before joining Personal Capital earlier this year, Gale was part of the founding team at Globality, where her roles included that of the interim chief marketing officer. Earlier in her career, she served as vice president of marketing for Virgin America. In addition to those roles, she has been advising numerous startups.

“Reddit’s network of passionate communities offers people social substance that is entirely unique from anywhere else on the internet. So much of what people find online today is self-promotion or driven by influence, when what people want and need is authenticity and this substantive social experience,” Gale said in a statement. “This is why I was drawn to Reddit and why I’m eager to be part of the company’s journey.”

Gale’s appointment comes at an eventful time for Reddit. The company has been busy building out its ad and video products to ramp up monetization, and raised $300 million in new funding from Tencent and others in February.

With the appointment of a woman to its board, Reddit coincidentally also cleared a hurdle for a possible IPO. California passed a law last year that public companies doing business in the state need to have at least one female board member by the end of 2019.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in late 2017 that the company may go public by 2020. At the time, he argued that going public was inevitable for Reddit to both reward employees and investors, calling it “the only responsible choice” for the company. However, last year, he downplayed the idea of going public, joking to Bloomberg that it an IPO was “‘probably 35 years out.”

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