About

Deirdre Runnette is a highly accomplished and skilled general counsel who has made a name for herself in the technology industry. She has 20 years of experience in private practice and in-house counsel roles at Graham & Dunn, Dorsey & Whitney, Stoel Rives and Safeco Insurance. In 2007 she served as managing corporate counsel at T-Mobile handling cross transactional cases, tax, employment and major litigation. She became a well-rounded risk advisor and in 2012 made her current move to Zulily as general counsel and, as of 2016, head of human resources also. Under her careful guidance, the company has grown to over 32,000 employees, raised its revenue from $300m to over $1bn, launched an IPO and guided the company through an acquisition in 2015. Runnette has been crucial in the company’s stability through its rapid growth and subsequent changes, and she has helped in the navigation of the e-commerce company’s legal matters when the law can lag behind in its design for the digital sector. She advises new in-house lawyers to have a ‘close partnership with business’, saying that, ‘we are business collaborators with business partners. Business is intrinsically risky; your job is to guide the business without stopping the business – providing legal solutions to business problems is a hallmark of the department’. Runnette departed Zulily in December 2018 to focus on a new challenge.