When PayPal went shopping for a general counsel, they got one with plenty of currency in mobile tech. Louise Pentland, who became the company's top lawyer earlier this year after its split from eBay, spent 16 years at Nokia, where she rose to general counsel, overseeing a worldwide team of 400 and a sizeable patent portfolio. Pentland is a solider of the smartphone wars, having worked on Nokia's cases against Apple and HTC, while building strategic relationships with Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm.

In 50 words or less: What can be done to tackle tech's gender gap?

All senior execs in all tech companies should be mentoring two to three women who can take their roles, and that should cascade. We should be grooming more women CEOs and board members.