Lexi Reese

Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder

2024 - Current

Building Lanai, the AI Empowerment Platform! Lanai's vision is to empower humans to achieve the extraordinary. We are a one-stop technology platform to help large organizations unlock secure, powerful human - Gen AI collaboration. Lanai provides full visibility into how your team uses Gen AI, ensures security of sensitive data, and delivers actionable insights to help your business get ahead. We're engineering a critical system for enterprise companies and are assembling a stellar team in Palo Alto, CA. We come from all backgrounds, but share core values around curiosity, community, commitment and clarity. If you're passionate about building trustworthy, generational tech, come join us! Special shout out to Principal Machine Learning Engineer (AI/ML, NLP, LLMs) and senior Backend and Fullstack engineers > https://www.withlanai.com/careers

United States Senate Candidate for the State of California

2023 - 2024

I ran for U.S. Senate to help us address a question we ask our kids all the time: what do we want to be when we grow up? As a state, as a nation, as human beings. Housing is out of reach, homelessness out of whack, gun violence is rising, climate is unstable, economic inequality at a peak. There's an assault on our body by bullets and anti-reproductive freedom extremists. We’re stressed, stretched, and struggling. We ended the race because of money (too expensive to keep going). But my commitment to helping create a just, equitable world where everyone can thrive - not just scrape by - remains in tact. I will continue to go all out for that world and spotlight others doing the same.

Executive In Residence / Future of Work

2022 - 2023

The issue of non-inclusive prosperity, evidenced by both relative income and wealth inequality and absolute financial insecurity in 1 of 3 American Households and 1 in 2 Black and LatinX Households, is one of the great societal, economic and political crises that we face – and it must be dealt with by the private sector - including capital allocators - as well as the public and non-profit sectors. The United States (and the world, but focusing on the U.S. as a start) cannot prosper and remain a vigorous democracy when so many are facing an affordability crisis to meet basic needs for housing, health, education, and care for young and elder family members. General Catalyst invests - with capital as well as operating time and talent - in the people, organizations, and programs that are revolutionizing the global economy and its infrastructure for the good of all humanity. My work @ GC was specifically focused on catalyzing good, family-sustaining jobs. It included developing a POV on the future of work and labor markets in the context of AI, making investment recommendations, and advising companies.

Chief Operating Officer

2015 - 2021

Gusto’s mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life. We delivered payroll + benefits + financial services to small and medium businesses. As Chief Operating Officer, I empowered our business teams – sales, marketing, customer experience, business development, insights and operations. My responsibilities: cost-effective growth, extraordinary service, and high-performance culture.

Member Board of Directors

2002 - 2021

Public Companies: Gap Inc .(2018 - 2020), compensation committee (stepped down after finalizing new CEO Search and strategic plan) Private Companies: Elevate K-12 (2022 - 23), led General Catalyst investment in the company and held the firm’s board seat Lattice (2022 - 2023) Board Development: Co-Creator of The Board Challenge in 2020, a movement to improve the representation of Black directors in corporate U.S. boardrooms by challenging companies to take the pledge to appoint a Black director within the next year Non-Profit Organizations: The Taft School (2010 - 2014), technology committee

Private Investor & Advisor

2019 - 2020

Operator Collective - LP in fund that brings together as limited partners 100+ ultra-talented operators, investors, and founders from diverse backgrounds to invest in and accelerate the next generation of b2b tech.

Vice President, Global Programmatic Platforms

2013 - 2015

Responsible for driving global strategy and sales of Google programmatic advertising and publishing services. That meant driving engagement and revenue from the ad systems, tools, and technology that connected advertisers to audiences through publishers of all sizes. Programmatic advertising (which included the Google Display Network, DoubleClick Bid Manager, The Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers and AdSense) was intended to keep the Internet free and accessible, support diverse content creation, and connect consumers with useful ads instead of irrelevant ones. The role was as close to general management as it comes at Google, as it sat right at the intersection of our technical and business teams. Specific responsibilities: define and drive multi-year strategy, annual and quarterly business and talent plans, and deliver awareness, consideration and adoption goals in programmatic buying and selling among Fortune 1000 to small business advertisers and publishers. The business line grew from from X million to X billion of revenue. Peer products: Google Search, YouTube.

Managing Director, Global Publishers and Platforms

2011 - 2013

Director Local Advertising

2011 - 2011

Led short-lived and failed effort in online coupons (Facebook Deals). Moved from NY to SF for the role. Life circumstances and soul-searching prompted a quick return to Google for chapter 2 of my time there at Mountain View HQ.

Director, Google Display Network and Doubleclick Ad Exchange

2008 - 2011

Sales and strategy leader for Americas Publisher Solutions, Doubleclick Ad Exchange, and Google Display Network. This was a wild time that involved advising Fortune 1000 advertisers and top agencies to use Google to advertise off of google.com and across the rest of the Internet. Also involved advising publishers to add inventory to our networks and exchanges. Incredible range of experiences leading our Social Media and Gaming efforts (think: MySpace and Lively, our competitor to SecondLife), deal-making and marketing/sales management, x-functional strategy and product leadership, working across DoubleClick and Google on the integration of both companies.

Head of Online Sales and Operations, Boston

2007 - 2008

Launched AdWords East Coast Online sales and operations. First bigger team leadership role - hired approx 100 leaders to sell and support Small Businesses to grow their business using AdWords. Felt like running a start-up within Google and still a career highlight. Love jazz hands with lobster claws.

Senior Director Marketing, Sales, Operations

2004 - 2007

Responsible for sales, marketing, and operations in OPEN, the small business division of AmEx. Highlights: participated in roll-out of the OPEN brand, led the advocacy team which invested in women and minority-led businesses, managed high value customer team. Started the Make Mine a Million program with Count Me In.

Investments and Business Development Associate

2002 - 2004

Two year rotation in Investments and Business Development, doing minority venture investments and acquisitions for AmEx. Part of deal team that acquired and integrated Rosenbluth Travel.