Kim Paone

I cover financial technology, payments, enterprise technology, identity and security. At my last gig, I worked on more than 15 tech and financial services IPOs.

I spent 10 years at a leading Silicon Valley PR agency. This was during the heyday and then the aftermath of the dot.com boom. It was quite interesting to say the least. I worked on consumer and B2B tech accounts. Besides all of the ups and downs, it was such an exciting time from a technology perspective, especially the beginning of what we called then on-demand computing but we now know as SaaS. I also developed my ability to work on corporate reputation building or re-building as the case may be. I had one online retail client who had had fulfillment issues during their prior holiday shopping season, so we spent a year helping them rebuild their reputation with consumers, retailers, investors and regulators. There were other startups that I launched and helped build awareness for that were eventually sold to tech giants. It’s very gratifying to see the companies that you work for do well.

I’m proud that our NYC office will have tripled in size in my first year.

I like to take advantage of the best that NYC and the Bay Area has to offer. I enjoy being in the ocean, hiking and of course visiting wineries.

I’d work to spread financial literacy and help people manage their finances.

I like telling stories. I was an English major. I specialized in Shakespeare during my undergrad and wrote my thesis on his set of plays called the Henriad. I also interned at The Shakespeare Theatre in D.C. I was lucky in that I was placed in the PR department, so I was able to learn first-hand how stimulating and interesting PR can be.