Twilio Top Lawyer Hired From Impossible Foods Lands Big Payday

Cloud communications platform Twilio Inc. handed its top legal executive Dana Wagner a pay package valued at almost $26.2 million in 2022.

Twilio disclosed in a proxy statement Wednesday that Wagner received nearly $25.6 million in stock awards from the San Francisco-based company last year, as well as $600,000 in annual base salary.

That total compensation dwarfed the roughly $262,000 in cash that Wagner was paid in 2021 after being hired by Twilio in December of that year from privately held Impossible Foods Inc., where he spent four years as the plant-based meat substitute maker’s top lawyer.

Wagner’s pay for one month of service at Twilio in 2021 included a $250,000 sign-on bonus to become the company’s chief legal and compliance officer and corporate secretary.

He succeeded Karyn Smith, who stepped down after spending almost a decade leading Twilio’s law department. Smith subsequently took the top legal job at Snyk Ltd., a Boston-based cybersecurity startup that parted ways with her amid a mass layoff late last year.

Twilio, which makes communications and marketing software, acknowledged a hack last year that affected some employees and customers. The company announced a corporate restructuring in February.

The company said it would shed 17% of its workforce, cut back on certain employee benefits, and reduce office space after expanding too quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Twilio went public in 2016.

Earlier this year Twilio also touted a plan to buy back $1 billion in stock. Within the past year Wagner—who previously worked at Alphabet Inc.'s Google and payments company Square Inc., now called Block Inc.—has sold off nearly $1.4 million in Twilio stock, according to securities filings.

Twilio’s most recent proxy states that Wagner’s large stock award was granted in January 2022 and represents a mix of restricted and performance-based shares.

The Wagner-led legal team at Twilio has experienced turnover in recent years. Prior to Wagner’s hire in 2021, former Twilio deputy general counsel Shanti Ariker took the top legal job at software company Zendesk Inc.

Marian Sattar, a former vice president of legal for corporate at Twilio, left last year to become general counsel for software startup Podium Inc. Transcend Inc., a San Francisco-based data privacy startup, recruited former Twilio lead product counsel Brandon Wiebe last year to be its general counsel and head of privacy.

Rebecca Murphy Thompson, an attorney and former head of communications policy, global public policy, and government affairs at Twilio, also left last year to become vice president of government affairs at United States Cellular Corp.

Twilio has sought to offset some of those departures by making new hires. Richard Whitt, an attorney and former director of strategic initiatives at Google, joined Twilio last September as its new head of government relations and public policy. Twilio also hired Andy Krebs, a lawyer and former director of legal operations at Intel Corp., as a senior director and its head of legal ops.