Tricia Montalvo Timm rose to the top of her game in The Legal Department, hiding her true identity as a Latina and mother of two. For years, she led legal teams and served on the executive teams of several companies “passing” as white, but not realizing the impact this would have on her. All that changed when she interviewed for a general counsel position at data analytics company, Looker, and allowed her true identity to shine through. A natural leader, Tricia started the company’s diversity and inclusion program, serving as its executive sponsor. After leading a $2.6 billion transaction to sell the company to Google, Tricia wrote “Embrace the Power of You, Owning Your Identity at Work,” to help others live their true identity and flourish in their careers in life.
In this episode, Tricia shares advice for:
- How to create an environment that supports all employees and builds a cohesive team;
- How to be a sponsor and help others reach their career aspirations; and
- How the General Counsel can address inappropriate comments and navigate uncomfortable situations
Now a board member at top SaaS company, Salsify, Tricia shares how lawyers can overcome the identity of “lawyer” and land a corporate board seat. She also answers a sticky Office Hours question about how to deal with friction between a GC and their C-suite peer.
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Listen to the podcast here
About Tricia Montalvo Timm
Tricia Montalvo Timm is a highly accomplished first-generation Latina board director, venture investor, speaker, and author who achieved significant success in Silicon Valley, including advising numerous tech companies and playing a key role in the $2.6 billion acquisition of Looker by Google. As one of the few Latinas to reach the C-suite, join corporate boards (currently serving at Salsify), and invest in venture capital, she is also a dedicated advocate for women and girls, mentoring and investing in female-founded companies, and has received multiple awards for her leadership and impact. Through her book, “Embrace the Power of You,” she aims to inspire individuals from underrepresented backgrounds to embrace their identities and achieve professional fulfillment.
Transcript
On this episode of The Legal Department, I’m excited to welcome Tricia Montalvo Timm, who is a board director, former general counsel, and author of Embrace the Power of You. Tricia, how are you?
I’m good. Thanks for having me on your show, Stacy.
Overcoming Identity Masking: Tricia’s Journey As A Latina Professional
I’m excited to have this conversation. You and I met through a mutual friend who described you as the former general counsel of a big company that was sold to Google, one of the largest exits at that time, but as someone who was Latina who had been passing as White for most of her career. That made me sit up in my chair, and I wanted to learn more about that. We’re going to be talking about that part of your journey, inclusion, and what we can do as lawyers to foster that. I’m going to tease that. We’re going to talk a little bit about one of the hardest identities you had to overcome to get into the boardroom.
Sounds good. Those are all juicy topics. I’m ready to dive in.
I don’t do a career journey, but with that setting the stage that you lived most of your working career, you were passing as white. Also, in your book, you talk about hiding your identity as a parent, even going so far as to have to breastfeed your newborn daughter in the parking garage, which is painful for me to even think about. Can you talk a little bit about your experiences leading legal departments and how you started out masking that cultural identity?
I’ll start with a little bit about my background. My mother is from El Salvador. My father is from Ecuador. I’m a first generation, grew up in Los Angeles, born here in the United States. My parents neither went to college. They were hardworking, amazing parents, but they were discriminated against. They had strong Spanish accents. They had the belief system that many immigrants do. It was to assimilate as quickly as you can. Particularly my mother, being in El Salvador and going through the Civil War in the ‘70s, thought that it would be a detriment for people to know where we came from because there were a lot of biases at the time. The foundation started with let’s not talk about it too much.
I spoke great English, and I went to a predominantly White school, so I didn’t see a lot of Latinos where I grew up. That’s where it started this cultural belief of how Latinos are portrayed in media and culture and all the other things. I internalized the belief system that being Latino was in some way inferior, and it was going to hurt me. It was unconscious. It wasn’t something I intentionally did. It was not a negative belief system that my parents intentionally wanted me to internalize, but that’s what happened. As I progressed through college, law school, and my career, it got validated because you see nobody like you in those spaces.
Latinos are the least represented in all positions of leadership in corporate America, boardrooms, and the like. Not seeing anyone like me. At the time, there were no programs around connecting groups of students or professionals together, whether it was women’s groups or Latinos or anything. I felt very alone and the way I’m going to make it is by fitting in.
I remember you wrote about living in Los Angeles. Like many of us, you dabbled in the entertainment industry, and you were a child actor.I don’t know if it was your mom or your agent who recommended that you change your last name to get roles.
My maiden name is Montalvo, which is now a middle name. I was getting typecast. I was only getting Spanish-speaking roles for Hispanic media. My agent said, “It’ll be easier and better for you if you change your name.” They changed it to McLaine. As a little kid, all of a sudden, I was Patricia McLaine. I remember my father saying, “Are you embarrassed about our name?” As a kid, I was like, “I don’t know.”
“I’m just doing what they tell me to do.”
Exactly. They tell me this is what’s going to make me successful. I think those messages formed the foundation early on.
Success & Authenticity: Balancing Identity In Corporate Law
You have a very big career, but you’ve had a lot number of general counsel roles, public company general counsel roles, and then the role at Looker, the company that sold to Google. Do you feel that hiding your identity or I hate to even say coming out as Latina or a mother helped you? Was that a factor in your success?
It’s hard to say. As I go around right now and talk to young people starting in their careers, it’s easy for me now later in my career to say, “Be your authentic self. It’s the way to go.” When you’re young and starting your career, you’re subject to the workplace culture that you exist in. I genuinely believe that at the end of the day, being who you are is going to propel you to success because you spend less energy on things that don’t matter and more energy on producing great work, innovation, and building.
That perspective is so important in the workplace. I believe that to be true, but I also know the struggle of whether that might not fit in every space that you’re in. If I truly showed up as who I was early in my career, I would not have tolerated toxic work environments as long as I did. I probably would have ended up in a place that was better suited for me. That is a path that would have been different.
At the same time, the struggles and the challenges that I had in mind were the reason that I am such an advocate now because I want to change that for the next generation. I don’t regret all of that because it’s one of those things when you look back at your life. Do I wish it didn’t happen? Not really, because I think that it’s given me a sense of empathy and advocacy that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I think it’s important.
It also sounds like a very optimistic glass-half-full person.
It depends. I’m a lawyer.
You wrote a lot about what it meant to belong and fit in the law firm or the corporate environment. You talked about straightening your hair and wearing more of a corporate look. I have to tell you, I don’t see those as necessarily White attributes. Especially as lawyers, I feel like we have to wear the uniform. Especially as general counsel, and I maybe want some mentoring here, I feel like I need to look like I am put together. I am someone that you can trust. I know what I’m doing. To me, that is wearing a suit, for example.
You make a great point. As women, we do have that gender bias of how we are going to be respected in the room. The reason we think that wearing the suit is going to get us respected is because the media, culture, and all the things have created the thinking that that is what garners respect. Wearing something that represents your personality with bright colors and a dress, I mean I have 20-year-olds, and some of the things they choose to wear are questionable.
Being yourself will propel you to success. You'll spend less energy on things that don't matter and more on producing great work, innovation, and building. Share on XWe’re going to look professionally, but we can look professionally while at the same time, expressing our personalities in the way we feel the most comfortable. I tell people, “You are going to show up in that room with confidence when you are comfortable in how you’re feeling. If you’re not comfortable in the black suit with the black pumps because your ankles hurt, you’re not going to be your best self. Be professional but bring yourself in that look.”
I think that there’s a generational shift happening. You read that Gen Z doesn’t want two wardrobes. They don’t want their weekend wardrobe and their work wardrobe. I had an instance where I was hiring for a non-legal role.My leader who was over this unit was African-American, and we interviewed an African-American candidate. She had long nails that had sort of adornments, like sparkly things that were off the nails. I noticed it but didn’t say anything. My colleague said, “I can’t move her forward,” which was not surprising to me. I don’t know if that was reflecting her experience, coming from an underrepresented group, but she made a point to call that out in the recruiting process.
That’s interesting. Sadly, sometimes we’re not allies to our own people. I’ve seen women have a greater bias towards other women. I’ve seen that within my own Latino community. We don’t support each other as much as we should, and that’s a disservice. When you talk about the nails, Cynthia Erivo from Wicked has those long nails. She’s normalizing like, “I am this amazing person. I love these long nails.” I think that’s a perfect example of how showing up authentically as who you are serves as a role model for others and starts demystifying some of these biases that people might have.
What can in-house leaders do to foster people feeling included and bringing their whole selves to work, but then also being able to carry and give that air of confidence, trustworthiness, etc.?
We’re living in challenging times right now. The word DEI has been weaponized. A lot of companies and organizations are nervous, and many are frightened of losing federal funding by having programs such as these. That’s scary to me that saying a word is all of a sudden going to jeopardize your ability to continue providing the services that we need to protect our democracy. Right now, what we need more than anything is courage. Courage to do the hard things and the courage to continue the work. We need to continue it more than ever.
Whether we use the words DEI, or call it something differently, at the end of the day, as leaders, it’s about continuing to advocate for a diverse slate of candidates in the recruiting process, continuing to advocate for equitable compensation practices and promotion practices, and continuing to create trust within the organization and your employees with transparency around all of these topics. As leaders individually and as managers, I would say continue to be vulnerable with your employees, creating that trust, yourself being honest about what things are hard creates that psychological safety for others to show up more of who they are and say things that they may be afraid to say about themselves. Continue to educate yourself.
Building Inclusive Legal Departments: Leadership Strategies
Learning about different cultures and identities, and doing your own work so that you as a manager can show up as an inclusive leader. At the end of the day, whether the corporation has a structured DEI program or not, the way the employee feels about an organization is a direct result of how a manager treats them.
The manager relationship is far and away the most important. We know that from all of our employee engagement and all that. I want to dig a little bit more specifically into your book. It’s well organized. In each chapter, there’s a section that talks about tips for managers. We’re not going to go through all of those now. I want to make sure folks know that there’s a very tactical, practical resource in the book itself.
I had a podcast episode with Valerie Portillo, who’s a director at Diversity Lab or was at the time we recorded. We talked about stretch projects, for example, and making sure you use the word transparency, making sure that everybody knows these are stretch projects that are available, or these are promotions that might be available. These are opportunities. You don’t have to put a DEI label on it. There are things that you can do to create an inclusive environment that doesn’t require anything targeted to any specific group or labeled a certain way.
What I would add to that is being a sponsor for others. I’m sure you’ve talked about the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. A sponsor is somebody who is behind the scenes advocating for somebody. If there’s a stretch project, recommend that person for that particular role and bring them into the room. Those kinds of behaviors will help bring along other people.
There’s a chapter in your book about sponsorship and mentors as part of building your toolbox to deal with some of these issues. There are a couple of examples where you’re passing, people aren’t aware they’re with a person of color necessarily, or maybe they don’t recognize that, which is also shocking. You’re in conversations and they’re uncomfortable, including conversations with senior leaders of an organization and board members. I have an interesting Charlie Munger story about that. The General Counsel, in particular, is in a lot of these rooms. I wonder if you could share maybe a story and some suggestions. I feel like the General Counsel is a representative of the ethics of the company. When you experience or witness some of these inappropriate biased comments, what should the General Counsel do?
I think the biggest thing you can do is interrupt the bias. Oftentimes, comments are very quick. They happen, and you move on. Pausing and interrupting that bias brings awareness to the person in the group. A comment is made with some sort of bias in it. What I’ll try to do is pause that conversation and say, “That’s interesting. Tell me more.” That phrase, “Tell me more about that,” requires the person to think about the comment they made. It brings an awareness of maybe that, “Why did I say that?” “That wasn’t the right thing to say,” or “Let me learn.”
You hope.
You can then say, “Let me tell you how it was received over here.” That’s training that not everybody has on how well-intended comments can have an adverse impact. I’ll say that to, “Over here, let me tell you how I received it and how others might receive it so that you know.” I do this, and everyone will do this. I always like to say, “I’m going to assume great intent. I don’t think people are trying to hurt anybody. I know that this was completely well-intentioned. I want to let you know for the next conversation or someone else, that might be something that might impact them.” That’s it. It doesn’t have to be a big whole thing.
The “Tell me more” is a powerful way to open that because it doesn’t forecast any opinion. You are expressing curiosity, and you hope the person catches on. You also talk in the book about knowing whether the environment is a safe place to even raise those questions. That’s important for us to all have awareness. You talked about in the book that you stayed in an environment that was not supportive because you had to. You were the economic engine for the Timm family, and you had to keep a job that wasn’t aligned with you. How can people gauge that environment? What are things they should look for in determining whether it’s a safe space to even ask the question, “Tell me more?”
People know right away whether they have a sense of belonging. I think what happens is your decision whether to stay in it or not. When you have a sense of belonging, you feel free to debate, free to show up, comfortable walking in, and that your opinion matters. When all of those things are there, then you have a sense of belonging. When those things aren’t there, the first step is noticing it. It’s hard to notice because the armor that we’ve put up over the years from school to your professional career is very strong. You figure out how to survive in these situations. What I tell people is, at the end of the day, you will be better off in a place that values and celebrates who you are.
That might not be today, for a variety of reasons, because you’re the breadwinner or this is a particularly great role, and you’ve got equity tied up in it. You want the best or whatever the reason might be, you may choose to stay in a place. That’s okay. The key is having agency over that decision. If you decide, “I’m going to stay here for another year for a variety of reasons,” great. Maybe it’s not worth taking on those battles if it’s a culture that’s beyond repair for personal reasons. That’s fine. Others may choose, “I’m going to stay but I want to try to change or slightly move the needle on the culture. I understand that this may come with some consequences for my career or friendships.” Do you have the support system to withstand some of those blowbacks?
Navigating Challenging Conversations: Bias & C-Suite Dynamics
Either way, if you do say something or you ride it out, there are consequences, potentially. That’s important for folks to recognize that riding along and keeping your head down is not without impact. You wrote about you didn’t even realize it. You had some health and other issues that overwhelmed you.
It does catch up to you. It eventually does. I see it over and over again. Even if we talk about staying in a situation where there’s gender bias over and over again, it’ll eventually impact your health. It comes with the consequence. It’s just slower and invisible. You don’t see it day to day, but it’ll catch up.
I can’t remember if it was a board member or somebody else who commented they should limit voting to landowners, which is so shocking.
Although in this day and age, I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes back.
I think everything old is new again. I believe that we’re going to have some more uncomfortable conversations, but maybe talk about the general counsel carrying a certain weight in the room. How do you, even with that curiosity, talk about interactions with folks that are very powerful, like board members or CEOs?
You are going to show up in that room with confidence when you are comfortable. Share on XAt this point in my career, and I think this comes with experience, it’s massaging those conversations slowly. This might be generational, too. I don’t come at people head-on hard. I nurture a conversation. First, I nurture a relationship and I create trust because I think in any working environment, creating a trusted relationship is going to be critical. Especially for the general counsel, your leadership needs to trust you. Within that framework of trust, having these tough conversations as they come up in a sense of curiosity and that ‘tell me more’ type of perspective. I have seen that change people.
Storytelling changes people, and that’s why I told my story because telling my story, people say, “I didn’t even realize you were going through this mental dance every time.” Men have told me, “I didn’t realize that women have a hard time in the boardroom when they’re the only woman,” or “Why can’t they speak up?” Because I get interrupted every time or my idea gets stolen or all the things that happen. Saying like, “Let me tell you my experience and how it’s happened to me,” no one can question your experience. I can’t say that didn’t happen because it happened. It’s this slow educational process. I’ve seen that work well with executives.
I want to shift a little bit. You are a board member on a corporate board or at least one. For many of us, it’s the gold ring. Everybody wants one of these board positions. They’re very hard to get an opaque process where the opportunities are, etc. We talked about being Latina and being a woman. Those were benefits in the board search, but there was an identity that you needed to overcome. What was that?
Being a lawyer, which was a little shocking. As I started going through the board journey and the board process, one of the strategies was to go out to your network and tell everyone you know that you want to be on a board. Through that process, you get connected to a variety of different people. I got connected to a number of different board recruiters. With many of those conversations, the board recruiter would end with, “Your experience is great, but you’re a lawyer, and CEOs got a general counsel. They’ve got an outside counsel. Why do they need another lawyer?”
I had to listen to that question and realize that I had to reframe my story. I had to reposition the experience that a general counsel brings to the table that is not just law. As general counsel, we have a seat at the table for a number of different strategic decisions. I compare myself to the CFO. We’re making all of the same decisions, our ability to scale internationally, our ability to run an M&A transaction, and our ability to manage a sales team and privacy program. There are so many crises. There are so many different things.
Who better than us?
Actually, who better? I’m noticing that more now that I’ve been in my role for years. Every board should have a lawyer because in the boardroom, even though we have a general counsel, even though we have outside counsel, it’s not until something is a problem does it gets to those people. In the boardroom, you can help highlight issue spots and navigate much earlier.
Reframing Your Legal Expertise: Boardroom Success Strategies
How did you overcome it? You are in the boardroom all the time, and you’re like, “Yeah, I got this.” As you’re saying, “Who better than me?” It’s interesting that the recruiters certainly didn’t see it that way. How did you overcome the legal identity?
Part of it is the way I pitched myself. Most of my experience has been in enterprise software and SaaS companies. I started talking about my industry experience and working with SaaS companies, scaling SaaS companies, my experience around the sale of Looker to Google, and understanding how to prepare a company for a high-value exit. It’s talking about the operational experience that I have and highlighting the legal part of it.
Playing down, straightening the hair of the lawyer.
All of my skill sets came into play. That’s funny. I never thought about that. Yeah, playing the part that I needed to be. I would say the other big factor was not of my doing, but of the CEO that was recruiting for the position. Two things happened. One, we had a board recruiter. They came in through Spencer Stuart. I had a board recruiter who saw my value and wanted to get more women on boards, and so was advocating for my candidacy with companies. Having a board recruiter that believes in you was important. There was a CEO at Salsify who was very open to different kinds of backgrounds. A lot of times, CEOs will say, “I want a CEO mentor. I want someone that has go-to-market experience. I want someone who was a former CFO or a former CEO,” and that’s it.
Ultimately, we can only control our own behavior, not the behavior of others. Be yourself, do great things—that's all you can control. Share on XWhen the requirements of that candidate are so narrow, it’s hard to break in. He was a very broad person. He was like, “I’m open to all different kinds of experiences, and I’m going to see who would be the right fit for our company.” That gave me the window in to be interviewed for that role. Through conversations, we realized it was an incredible fit. It was exactly the type of company that I wanted to be in. I wanted to be in a late-stage SaaS company, somebody who’s ready for an exit at some point, preparing them, and a culture fit. I cared a lot about companies that valued culture and their employees. This company is one of them.
In that interview process, did you downplay your legal experience? Did you talk more about your business experience? How did you sell yourself?
I didn’t downplay anything. It was one of those interviews like Looker where I was completely myself with the thought of ‘if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the right role.’ We talked a lot about my experience at Looker and what we had done with different programs. He cared a lot about relationships with the team, collaboration, and decision-making. I didn’t intentionally downplay anything. We talked about my background, my experience, and the things I had done.
If you had to give advice to other lawyers who are trying to land board seats, is there anything you would share with them about their portfolio? I always hear that they want people with operational experience, and it’s hard to be running the legal function and also an operational or P&L responsibility.
I think running a P&L would be difficult. There are things outside of the traditional legal role that you could try to bring within your purview. Facilities, for example. HR sometimes can come into the legal goal. We’ve heard Chief Administrative Officer would be an interesting title. Anything around privacy and security are areas that legal counsel can manage. Expanding it beyond contracts.
Not the legal infrastructure so much.
It can only benefit you because then you have more to talk about. I spent a lot of time under my responsibility was privacy at Looker. I’ve also managed equity stock administration programs. I’ve also collaborated with the HR department on international expansion. International expansion is something that companies do a lot of. As counsel, we’re in the middle of a lot because of employment issues and otherwise, talking about your experience of going into another country. These are the things that you think about that are incredibly valuable experiences.
Probably few people have that experience, too.
They do. Companies make mistakes all the time when entering new jurisdictions.
I bet. It must be like the US. I know you’re involved in the Compensation Committee, which is another area that does sort of dovetail with the legal stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that?
I’m the chair of the Compensation Committee at Salsify. The Compensation Committee is becoming a very strategic committee. It’s the only place where you have the ability to align executive compensation with the company strategy in designing executive compensation programs, cash bonuses, and performance elements. Are we going to focus on increasing the top line or the bottom line? There’s a real role there from not only financial metrics but what other metrics are going to be important. What other things are important to the company culture? For example, it might be something that you might want to roll in there. We also noticed the correlation between a compensation design and its culture.
As we talked about, it was fascinating. We realized that a company that designs a compensation program that is, for example, broad-based and everybody gets an equity grant that focuses on pay equity and thinks about parental leave policies, 401(k) matches, sabbaticals, all of these different things. When you see those design elements, you realize it impacts culture. When those things are missing, you tend to have workplaces that are not as attractive. It is becoming very strategic.
As I was going through the conversation on the Comp Committee, we were talking about all the different elements, I thought to myself, where the Audit Committee requires audit experience and former CFOs, the Comp Committee should have a lawyer. It should have a legal background because it has been incredibly useful for me when we’re designing programs. I thoroughly understand equity, vehicles, options, RSUs, tender offers, and all of those things. I’m an expert when it comes to those issues, and it has become incredibly valuable.
I think that helps our audience to be aware that this is something that they may want to spend some time on if board service is in the future. We’re rounding the bend here. Every so often, I do a segment when I have a distinguished general counsel like yourself called Office Hours, and I get a lot of listener questions. Given your very extensive background, I thought that you’d be a good person to answer this question. One of my listeners asks, “I’m new to my GC role, and I’m still getting to know my colleagues in the C-suite. All are nice and welcoming, but I’m noticing that we all seem to have different relationships with the CEO.
Our chief administrative officer in particular seems very close to the CEO. He also leads HR, so supports the CEO in managing the C-suite team, including me. The chief administrative officer has made comments to me about my compensation or how I’ve ‘worked the CEO’. I suspect he may be undermining me with my boss. What can I do to address this situation and preserve my relationship with the CEO?” This is a big one.
Office Hours: Navigating C-Suite Dynamics & CEO Relationships
First, I’d say that’s a hard place to be. I have a lot of empathy for this person. We talked earlier about creating trusted relationships. I would try to see if there’s a way to start developing and nurturing a better relationship with the CEO so that you can create a space so that you can have communication with this person to see if you can have an honest conversation about things. One of the things that I’ve learned is there’s a difference between story and fact.
There’s a technique that I’ve learned, which is what are the facts and what is my story? The facts may be that they’ve known each other for twelve years. The facts are they worked at three private companies. Can you lay out what the facts are? My story is because of it, they prefer working with each other. Because of it, they might be undermining the story that came through. That technique can be something you present to somebody.
“Here, I want to have a deeper connection with you. I want to understand that these are the facts. This is my story. Am I right or am I wrong?” That’s a gutsy thing to do. It might be hard. That’s why you create a relationship where you can potentially have some conversation to understand what is fact and what is story. That’s what I would say. At the end of the day, we can only control our behavior and not other people’s behavior. I would continue to foster relationships with the CEO, continue role modeling and allyship, be who you are, and do great things. That’s all you can do. That’s all within your control.
You can get overly focused on the other person. The only person in the room you can control is yourself and how you react to it. Thank you for that. The last question. It’s a softball. I’ve used music my whole life to get me through hard times, to get me pumped up. I always like to learn from my guests about what gets them pumped up. What is your pump-up song?
It depends on what I’m getting pumped up for, Stacy. If I’m getting pumped up for friends and the night out, I’ll listen to things like The Killers, Ramones, English Beat, or something that’s a beat. If I’m trying to get pumped up for something that requires my courage, maybe having that hard conversation, or for me, sometimes going out and speaking might make me nervous. I have a lot of female empowerment songs. Anything by Pink, Rachel Platt, and Fight Song, or things like that remind me of my resiliency and ability to do things well.
Awesome. Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. You’re an amazing leader.Thank you for your contribution. Again, the book is Embrace the Power of You: Owning Your Identity at Work by Tricia Montalvo Timm. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
