Law Students

Superwomen JDs and What You Can Learn From Them: Featuring Andrea Chavez of San Francisco CA

By Noha

Bio for this week's Superwoman JD: Andrea Chavez is an Executive Partner and a co-founder of VLP. Andrea has spent her entire professional career negotiating and closing large technology transactions in the semiconductor, networking, software and digital media areas. For over ten years, she has represented both early stage and established companies in licensing, joint ventures, technology transfers, outsourcing, intellectual property acquisitions and other commercial and strategic pursuits in the United States and abroad.

After completing an AB cum laude in Philosophy at Harvard and a JD and MS in Computer Science at Stanford, Andrea started her legal career at Venture Law Group. She subsequently co-founded and ran all sales, business development and legal initiatives at Mediabolic, the leading provider of embedded software for next generation consumer electronic products. At Mediabolic, Andrea sourced and closed deals with semiconductor, manufacturing, codec, content and consumer electronics partners in the United States, Europe, Japan, China and Taiwan, resulting in the deployment of Mediabolic software in millions of consumer electronics products across the globe, including DVD players, media adapters, computers, personal video recorders, and AV systems. After the sale of Mediabolic to Macrovision, Andrea co-founded Lion Tech Law, a boutique law firm based in San Francisco, prior to co-founding VLP. Andrea is a member of the State Bar of California.  

1.    How has being a woman affected your career or legal education? 

I don?t think it?s affected my education much.  I was appalled by some of the killer instincts/nastiness some of my classmates demonstrated in law school, but that behavior emanated from men and women alike.  I can?t say the same thing about my career, unfortunately.  I worked as a business development/sales executive, and experienced blatant discrimination and misogyny on multiple occasions.  I responded how I always do ? by working harder and accomplishing more than the next person, and letting my record speak for itself.

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Full post as published by Ms. JD on August 23, 2009 (boomark / email).