The Trade Desk Inc. has hired media and digital attorney Jay Grant as chief legal officer, replacing Vivian Yang, who earlier this year said she would leave the advertising technology company.
Grant, who in his new role will report to Trade Desk co-founder and CEO Jeff Green, comes to the company with more than two decades of in-house experience, the Trade Desk said.
“The advertising industry is at a pivotal point right now,” Grant said in a statement. “Trends we thought would play out over several years have been compressed into a matter of months.”
Grant most recently served as general counsel of Univision Communications Inc.’s digital and news divisions. He assumed that role in 2019 after spending nearly three years as general counsel for Univision’s English language media unit, Fusion Media Group, operator of media brands like Deadspin, the Onion, and Univision Music.
Several of those brands were sold by Univision last year. Some had been bought by Univision in 2016 through its $135 million acquisition of bankrupt Gawker Media LLC. At the time, Grant was reportedly one of two Univision executives who recommended deleting six posts on legacy Gawker websites due to litigation involving their content.
Grant also advised Univision’s senior management on strategic partnerships, new ventures, and acquisition and distribution deals. The Trade Desk cited that experience in announcing the move. The Ventura, Calif.-based company specializes in innovative advertising solutions.
Yang, Grant’s predecessor as the Trade Desk’s legal chief, said in May she would step down from the role she’s held since August 2016, a month before the company went public. Yang owns roughly $17 million in Trade Desk stock, per Bloomberg data.
The Trade Desk disclosed in its 2019 proxy statement that it paid nearly $4.3 million in total compensation—including about $1.5 million in cash—to Yang last year.
Grant, who began his legal career in the early 1990s at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Los Angeles, will be based out of the Trade Desk’s New York office. He joins the company a month after it hired Winston & Strawn partner Ian Eisner in Los Angeles as an associate general counsel for litigation, regulatory, and employment.
Eisner spent eight years at Winston, departing briefly in 2018 to become head of litigation at Faraday & Future Inc., a troubled electric car startup that he left after several months to return to the law firm.
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