Danielle Merida, VP of legal and regulatory affairs, TaskRabbit. Courtesy photo

Danielle Merida, the general counsel of TaskRabbit, negotiated a pilot partnership with IKEA and guided the successful sale of the company to IKEA in October 2017.

Name a lawyer whose work you admire and why?

Jan Kang, a badass tech GC and founder of the Women's General Counsel Network, who seemingly never tires of giving back to and championing the success of women in law.

What's the best part about working in the tech sector?

Getting to work with a smart and passionate group of people who inspire me to go faster.

What piece of advice do you give to lawyers considering a career in tech law?

Focus on understanding the business as much if not more than understanding the law.

What's one way technology has made your life easier?

Self-serving perhaps but I hire Taskers to help plan my kids' birthday parties, clean out the garage and tackle a whole host of things on my to-do list which helps me feel more accomplished and frees up my time to spend with my family.

One way it's made your life more difficult?

Technology makes it easier to work all the time so I am working hard to be present with friends and family when I am with them.

Name an important opportunity you got early in your career and what you did with it?

My first in-house job was allowed me to work on a very small legal team which meant I learned how to do everything—contracts, managing litigation, labor and employment, product counseling, real estate, financing, M&A—you name it. That variety helped position me to start off at TaskRabbit as a team of one (thankfully now an amazing team of four).

What's the best piece of career advice anyone ever gave you?

Building relationships is pretty much everything.

No. 1 survival tip in a work crisis:

Be transparent, calm and empathetic.

In 50 words or less, how far has the tech industry gone toward tackling its gender gap since you started practicing?

TaskRabbit's leadership team is over 60 percent female and unfortunately that's atypical. We must do better which is why I'm on the board of Girls Leadership, which teaches girls the skills they need to exercise the power of their voice (in tech or otherwise).

What's one area of technology that you're most excited about (e.g. software, medical devices, autonomous vehicles) and why?

I heard Michelle Lee talk recently about the ethics around AI and find that fascinating. I'm glad we have brilliant minds like her leading the charge on these concepts.