By Andrew Cohen
Blending purpose and creativity, age-old goals and brand-new technologies, Berkeley Law alumni have relentlessly propelled innovation as a potent engine for progress. In high-level positions all over the legal terrain, they can be found surmounting complex challenges and advancing positive change for their companies, their commodities, and their customers.
True to the Berkeley spirit, these are not lone wolves with tunnel vision, but strategic, collaborative, big-picture leaders determined to improve how we work and live. Their efforts balance artificial intelligence with human ingenuity — transforming industries by increasing efficiency and unlocking new possibilities while keeping sight of the vital responsibilities that entails.
Here are four alumni catalysts whose work across the corporate landscape generate diverse solutions, blend tech power with human discernment, and boost Berkeley Law’s status as a leader in producing attorneys who transform imagination into impact.
Eager to help lead the way
While growing up in history-laden Philadelphia, Lauren Smith ’14 yearned for new frontiers. Professionally, that meant navigating unsettled areas of law and policy.
“There is a thrill to that work, when you feel like you’re not just doing a job but helping shape what the future will look like,” she says.
PayPal’s senior legal counsel for artificial intelligence since January, Smith honed that mindset working on autonomous vehicle (AV) regulatory issues for four years at Cruise.
“Even on the most trying days, I was motivated by the idea that almost no one had navigated this same challenge before,” she says. “So whatever we produced could wind up being the template on which an entire area of law and practice would eventually be built.”
Smith worked on global health and economic policy issues after college, then considered law school — and did her homework.
“I knew a good number of Berkeley Law alumni and they were overwhelmingly smart, interesting, and ambitious folks trying to make the world a better place and they’d developed the skills to do so at Berkeley,” she says. “They also said wonderful things about their experience there, which was unique. I wasn’t 100% set on law school, but once I got into Berkeley I knew I had to go.”
Smith developed privacy expertise with the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, helped run various tech-related student groups, learned about potential career paths through regular lunch programs and events, and earned a Law & Technology Certificate.
She interned at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — where she also worked full-time right after graduating — grappled with tech law and policy in then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office, and helped the ACLU’s Technology and Civil Liberties team.
“Berkeley Law supported my work outside of the classroom in a way that opened doors in emerging fields that I couldn’t have imagined,” Smith says.
At Cruise, she led federal regulatory engagement and safety policy for AVs and shaped emerging approaches to their regulation, working closely with federal regulators on incident response, recalls, and safety oversight. Previously, as senior policy manager at Lyft, she helped advance federal and state policy for ridesharing, micromobility, and AVs.
“The most fascinating challenge to me is where entrenched practices and industries meet new, disruptive technology that has the ability to make things more efficient, safe, and accessible,” says Smith, who spent three-plus years as senior policy counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum in Washington, D.C.
The questions that drive her now are how we define and tolerate unreasonable risk in AI technologies — and how we compare machine performance to that of imperfect humans.
“It’s hard for society to stomach the idea that algorithms will result in any harm, even though human-driven processes cause harm every day, whether through car accidents or through bias and discrimination,” Smith says.
As PayPal’s in-house counsel for AI, she advises on emerging regulations, guides product and engineering teams on AI development and deployment, and helps shape internal AI governance practices. Stressing the particular importance of sound AI governance in credit and commerce, Smith savors being among the first wave of companies learning to navigate this terrain.
“There aren’t many templates for what it means to have a successful career in the emerging technology space,” she says. “Most of my colleagues and mentors whose careers I wanted to model had been lawyers at the beginning of the internet — working at then-startups like Google, Twitter, AOL — when everything was an issue of first impression. Eventually I realized their experiences were not replicable, so I’d have to develop my own path. That’s part of what drew me to privacy, autonomous vehicles, and now AI, sub-fields where the law and policy haven’t been developed yet.”
Changing how we connect
As the world’s unstoppable tech train veered to new destinations that became household names, Jonathan Sidhu ’14 was often on board — as a product specialist for Google Docs and Drive, a legal intern for Facebook during law school, and now associate general counsel at Instagram. At each stop, he has seen common themes power innovation: adaptability, foresight, and resolve.
“It’s taken me almost a decade of practicing law to realize how valuable it is to be someone who can be dropped into an unfamiliar problem or situation, learn a new area quickly, and find a path forward,” he says. “My career has required doing that again and again, and the lawyers I’ve most admired are masters at this. The ability to learn — to absorb complexity, ask the right questions, and build judgment — is essential.”
For a year before law school, Sidhu worked as a journalist at Mint, an Indian business newspaper launched in partnership with the Wall Street Journal. When he joined Google in New York to work on Google Docs, he found himself increasingly drawn to the policy and legal questions that shaped how technology worked.
Watching a product lawyer there field wide-ranging legal questions from engineers and product managers, Sidhu recalls knowing “that was the job I wanted, but without any real understanding of how to get there.”
Berkeley Law provided the bridge, and the ability to deliver valuable legal insights in wide-ranging situations.
“In my legal career, I’ve constantly been thrown into new and unfamiliar areas of law or facts,” Sidhu says. “Many of the legal areas I work with every day — like some fundamental privacy laws — didn’t exist when I was in school or took Information Privacy Law with Professor (Paul) Schwartz, when we read lots of cases about old-school privacy torts. But that experience of absorbing new material, making sense of it, mastering it, and finding clarity in uncertainty has been essential to my career every day since graduation.”
Diving into the “messy, dynamic, and creative” process of working with the people building Facebook’s technology cemented his goal to work in-house at a tech company, embedded with product teams. Following a colleague’s advice, he clerked for two federal court judges and spent several formative years litigating at Williams & Connolly in Washington.
After landing an in-house position with Silicon Valley Bank for a year, Sidhu pounced on the chance to join the social media titan Instagram — where he works with teams that design and build new features for the company. Focusing on creative tools and emerging areas, he’s supporting a new Instagram app called Edits for creators to make videos. Previous projects covered safety, well-being, and the wildly popular Reels.
“The most challenging part is also the fun part: the pace. Things move quickly, and the learning curve is constant and steep,” he says. “But that’s what keeps the work meaningful — there’s always something new.”
Sidhu provides soup-to-nuts legal insights for Instagram’s teams, from early ideation to launch and beyond, advising across global privacy, copyright and intellectual property, consumer protection, competition law, regulatory requirements, and litigation risks. On any given day, he might be the only lawyer in a room of engineers, product managers, and others.
“It’s a bit surreal, and also thrilling, to watch something ship and know your fingerprints — your legal guidance — are woven into the product,” Sidhu says. “The most rewarding parts of the job are when I’ve worked through a complex set of issues, and helped a team find a path forward that feels responsible and risk-managed but also creative.
“Equally rewarding, and a little magical, is seeing a feature I advised on out in the world, being used by people who will never know the challenging and rigorous analysis that went into it.”
A perpetual growth mindset
Jacqueline Aguilar ’13 defies the notion that prioritizing innovation means changing jobs every few years. As assistant general counsel at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, she welcomes a work environment that she says continually encourages growth, taking on new challenges, and expanding one’s impact.
“Innovation also plays a key role in keeping the work engaging,” says Aguilar, who joined the company right after law school. “P&G is constantly evolving through new products, business models, and ways of working, and the legal function evolves alongside it.”
The company has won many innovation awards, from its AI use in product development to supply chain advancements to product enhancements that elevate sustainability. Aguilar says they “reflect a deeply embedded culture, not isolated initiatives” and that innovation is an expectation across all departments.
Leading complex M&A transactions that can reach billions of dollars, including a recent $3.8 billion acquisition of the vitamin/supplement company Thorne, Aguilar consistently brings not just legal expertise but also strategic and savvy business insight that informs key decisions.
She sees innovation as vital in legal work — not just by managing risk, but by adding value to the business and enabling teams to move faster, make smarter choices, and execute with confidence.
While core legal principles may be constant, Aguilar says the tools and approaches lawyers use should evolve and that innovation requires curiosity, openness to new ideas, and a willingness to reimagine processes to enhance efficiency and outcomes.
“In practice, innovation shows up in many forms: leveraging technology, embracing change, and continuously asking how we can do things faster, better, and more effectively — whether in solving complex problems, providing advice, or learning and applying new concepts,” she says. “I strive to be an innovator rather than a reluctant follower, because the legal function is most effective when it evolves in step with the business.”
As a Berkeley Law student, Aguilar won the American Jurisprudence Award in Negotiations, was a best brief award finalist in her Legal Writing class, and participated on negotiation and mediation teams — all of which she credits for her career rise.
“The fundamentals of preparation, understanding both sides’ needs and interests, active listening, effective communication, and creative problem-solving translate directly to M&A and commercial negotiations,” she says. “I use these skills daily at P&G, whether negotiating transactions, aligning stakeholders, or resolving complex issues with business partners. Law school taught me to advocate firmly while building trust, which is the foundation of every deal.”
Particularly on complex M&A matters, that means investing time up front to understand strategic objectives and stakeholder priorities, uncovering opportunities to simplify structures, applying lessons from prior transactions, and seeking ways to streamline and standardize.
Aguilar savors shepherding deals from early brainstorming through closing and transition, but she says knowing when to walk away from one is also a vital part of serving the company and its shareholders.
While managing a busy pro bono schedule, nonprofit board service, and regular mentoring, Aguilar steers fast-moving situations across global time zones and cross-functional teams — ensuring alignment and timely decision-making while balancing speed, risk, and nuances that often carry global implications.
“I’m trusted to navigate complexity, exercise sound judgment, and deliver solutions that advance the business and its long-term objectives,” she says. “Ultimately, innovation in legal work is as much about mindset as it is about method. It’s about enabling smart decisions — combining sound legal judgment with creativity, collaboration, and business insight so the company can succeed.”
Engineering new possibilities
Ethan Floyd ’18 crystallized his professional approach in rural Australia. During a field placement semester with Aboriginal Legal Services, he saw the law empower community advocacy and systemic reform.
“Life-changing,” he says. “It drove home the importance of understanding the human story and social context behind every single brief. It taught me that effective counsel requires empathy and compassion. You have to listen and understand an organization’s mission or a client’s lived experience before you can even think about providing a legal solution.”
Floyd recently served as corporate counsel at Rivian, an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer that builds adventure-focused trucks, SUVs, and commercial vans known for off-road capability.
Keeping the company’s internal structure and external disclosures on point, Floyd managed high-stakes areas that include ensuring compliance with a dizzying number of laws and regulations, helped with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, and navigated major deals.
In law school, Floyd wrote an article published in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy analyzing the environmental impact certain policies can have on the communities around us.
His LinkedIn page quote, “None of us are smarter than all of us,” signals an intellectual humility and a collective approach. That mindset helped him quickly build trust with colleagues over five years as a law firm corporate associate, as Canva’s corporate legal counsel, and at Rivian.
“In a law firm setting, the person running the data room has crucial institutional knowledge that I need just as much as a partner’s high-level strategy,” Floyd says. “If anything, it creates better bonds with the people you work with and really bolsters efficiency.”
In the tech world, he has regularly found himself in a room full of product managers, engineers, and finance leads, each an expert in their respective fields. “I’m certainly not smarter than a company’s head of engineering!” Floyd says. “As such, the most critical responsibility of my work is to synthesize and translate.”
Before going in-house, he enjoyed the fast-paced, high-stakes nature of corporate deals — but felt like he was always an external adviser parachuting in to fix a specific problem.
“I realized I wanted to be at the table before the deal was even cooked,” he says. “Being part of the team that shaped the product strategy, risk profile, and growth trajectory from the inside was appealing to me. The chance to move from being a reactive problem-solver to a proactive business partner was the main draw.”
Even though data privacy laws differ wildly across the world, Floyd enjoys building an adaptable, scalable system that can implement regulatory updates almost in real time without stifling innovation.
“Once you start managing your own deals, you essentially become a conductor of sorts, which is rewarding in its own right,” he says. “Seeing everyone play their part without hampering or hindering the deal as a whole — being able to synthesize the specialized inputs from tax, finance, product, and engineering and turning all that into one coherent package — that’s always rewarding.”
A former editor-in-chief of the Berkeley Journal of Black Law & Policy, Floyd is not remotely surprised to see so many fellow alums driving change in high-level positions.
“The school is always willing to evolve and stay at the forefront of innovation,” he says. “When you couple that with an incredible faculty, you end up with a law school that’s able to produce alumni who continually lead the charge in the tech industry.”