Sal Giambanco

Summary

I’m currently retired. I stepped down as the Board Chair of the Global Innovation Fund (GIF) at the end of 2020. I am grateful to have been a founding board member, along with Nobel Prize winners, Michael Kramer and Esther Duflo, and to have served as board chair. The GIF was incubated during my time as The head of Human Capital and Operations at the Omidyar Network (ON) where I developed and scaled the talent for ON and its portfolio organizations. I pioneered our non-financial, human capital support now largely copied by the rest of the VC community. In particular, I’m proud of my board governance work with the Wikimedia Foundation, my efforts to expand entrepreneurial ecosystems via Endeavor, my work with Ignia and Social Finance, and being the driving partner for ON’s support of the Crisis Text Line. I was also was the partner lead for ON’s investments in iMerit and Anudip and serve on IMerit’s board. At ON, I helped direct over $1 billion of philanthropy across a range of grants and equity based investments, impacting over 1.2 billion lives globally. I’m particularly grateful for having worked with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the global Tibetan refugee community, as well as working with Pope Francis at the Vatican. For nearly ten years, I served as the VP of Human Resources and Administration for PayPal and eBay. I was the 24th employee at what was originally called X.com, known today as PayPal, and was hired by Elon Musk. When I left, there were 8,200 employees across 19 countries. I remain grateful for having been able to serve some of America’s greatest leaders, having reported to folks such as Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, David Sacks, Pierre Omidyar, Matt Bannick, Jeff Jordan, Rajiv Dutta, and Scott Thompson. Prior to joining PayPal, I worked for KPMG as the National Recruiting Manager for the Information, Communication, and Entertainment practice. Previously, I directed Human Resources at Tech One, Inc. and held positions at Ernst & Young and ESS Technology, Inc. Prior to joining private industry, I spent a decade in the Jesuits. I hold an MA in philosophy from Fordham University, a Masters of Divinity from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and an AB in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University.