Employee Spotlight: Kathleen Kuan, Senior Commercial Counsel

Reputation Staff Writer

Kathleen Kuan’s journey at Reputation started years before she was hired. 

She received a LinkedIn message from Allie Akridge, Reputation’s Manager of Global Talent Acquisition. Initially, she didn’t recognize Allie’s name. But once she noticed that Allie included a chant from her high school graduating class, “Ain’t no party like a python party,” Kathleen realized that Allie was an old classmate from high school. After putting the pieces together, Kathleen was immediately intrigued to reconnect and hear more.

Allie ended up recruiting Kathleen for a role in Reptuation’s legal department. She started off as Contracts Counsel and eventually made her way up to our Senior Commercial Counsel. We recently spoke to Kathleen to learn more about her journey with Reputation. She told us about her favorite parts of her job, her advice for Reputation new hires, and what she does in her free time.

Q. Tell us a little bit about your background.

A. I’m California born and raised, and studied communications and political science at University of California-Davis and then went to University of San Diego for law school. I’ve been with Reputation for 2 years, but it feels like I’ve been here longer than that. Before Reputation, I worked for 5 years as an in-house counsel at an insurance company — all things insurance. It was a great experience and I got to learn and be exposed to a lot.  

Q. What made you interested in pursuing a career in law?

A. There wasn’t one big aha moment. I actually went into undergrad wanting to be a sports journalist, but that didn’t pan out. I needed more units to graduate, so I decided to pick up political science as a second major. I ended up really liking the classes, and a professor encouraged me to consider law school. I graduated undergrad in a recession, so I just decided to pursue more school and go to law school.

Q. What was your transition from corporate to tech like?

A. I always liked working on computers and using software to make processes or projects more efficient, so I ended up doing a lot of collaborating with our IT and analytics departments to get data in a way that made sure my team didn’t always have to manually review everything. I sort of naturally became the go-between person for the legal and IT departments. It was really interesting to me on how you could better use a data dump that can help you get more valuable data, or how implementing technology helped enhance and supplement legal work.

Q. What’s a typical day at Reputation like for you? 

A. Oh geez, it’s non-stop busy! A lot of time we don’t know what’s coming until there’s a legal request or question to support the business. A lot of my day is spent in meetings, going through the sales legal queue, drafting and negotiating contracts, continually assessing and evaluating our compliance, and answering any legal questions that come our way.

Q. Do you have any specific projects from your time at Reputation that stand out? 

A. It’s been really nice to support the different teams, specifically sales. I didn’t get to work as closely with sales or be involved in sales deals in prior jobs.

Q. What advice would you give to new hires?

A. Reach out! All the Reputation teams are really cool. It’s nice to see what different teams are working on and how that intersects with what you’re doing. I think our product is really cool. It’s neat to see each team be really excited by it, which I don’t think you get at a lot of companies. 

Q. If you weren’t working at Reputation, what would your dream job be?

A. One of my dream jobs would be to be a children’s author. I like children’s books because the librarian I had growing up was awesome. She instilled the joy of reading in people. It’d be cool to do that for the next generation. Or I’d be a world-traveling food critic — that’d be fun.

Q. Did you pick up any fun hobbies during the coronavirus lockdown?

A. I learned how to play the video game Fortnite. My husband and I are high school youth counselors for our church, and Fortnite is a really big thing with the guys (and even some girls!)  in the group. I’m by no means good (it’s really hard!), but it was a great way to bond with the youth while being virtual in our homes. I can kind of get by!

Are you or a connection interested in a role at Reputation? Take a look at our careers page today!

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