Thomas Chow of PubMatic. Courtesy photo

After a short stint leading Snap Inc.'s adtech and measurement legal group, tech industry legal veteran Thomas Chow is moving to PubMatic as general counsel and secretary.

The Redwood City-based company, which creates online advertising software for publishers, announced Chow's hire on Tuesday.

“At a time when businesses in our industry are consolidating, we are thrilled to be growing at such a rapid pace and to be adding Thomas' wealth of experience to our leadership team,” said PubMatic co-founder and chief executive officer Rajeev Goel in a statement.

“Thomas' years of legal advisory for major tech companies, such as Snap Inc., lends well to our growing organization as we continue to empower publishers in the multi-screen programmatic world,” he continued.

While working at Snap, the company behind popular messaging app Snapchat, Chow also served on the advisory board for BiBo Labs and the board of directors for Cryptsonic Technologies, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In an email to Corporate Counsel, Chow said his time at Snap helped him understand what's “happening with larger adtech players and the scope of interesting partnerships that is possible.”

He also has experience leading legal departments.

From 2014 to 2017, Chow was the general counsel, chief compliance officer and secretary of advertising intelligence company Exponential Interactive. Before that, he spent three years as general counsel of Vindicia and two years as acting general counsel of TechSoup Global, where he got his start in-house as associate general counsel in 2008.

At PubMatic, Chow will report to chief financial officer Steve Pantelick. He'll have five reports, including contract staff.

Chow told Corporate Counsel that to start off his tenure at PubMatic, he is learning about the company's specific policies and processes. He's also working on issues around privacy regulations and increasing legal department efficiency at the growing company.

“My top goal is to make PubMatic successful, so I want to make the legal process here the most efficient in our industry. I want everyone internally and externally to walk away with the thought that our legal team was reasonable and easy to do business with,” he said. “With the importance of privacy regulations, I also believe that this is one of the rare moments where a GC—and legal generally—can be a thought leader and guide to the industry.”

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