About

Douglas Kramer joined Cloudflare in August 2017 after serving in the Obama Administration for seven years. His time there was nothing short of impressive, as during the Obama Administration he worked for four years in the White House as White House Staff secretary and in the White House Counsel’s office, and later served as general counsel of USAID and Senate-confirmed deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration. In his current role he leads a team that provides strong support to Cloudflare, particularly within the sales and partnerships teams, at a time where the company has scaled and grown at a very rapid pace. Kramer has navigated this tactfully, without significantly increasing legal spend or adding any obstacles or delays to the rest of the company. Amongst his achievements at Cloudflare, since joining Kramer he has been instrumental in the overhaul of the trust and safety process to address the tens of thousands of alerts and complaints that they get on a weekly basis: ‘This was particularly challenging in light of the significantly changing landscape addressing intermediary liability for technology companies providing internet services’ states Kramer. Despite this, Kramer recognises the importance of being comfortable with risk and how it acts as a central part of growth and development for the team, explaining: ‘The best advice I can give [to another in-house lawyer] is to think constantly about how you create value for the firm, and work every day to develop the aptitude to discern and be comfortable with risk’. Kramer takes pride in having developed systems that empower employees throughout the company to identify risks, identify the preferred response, and implement that response ‘without needed a tailored answer or approval from the legal team’. Earlier in his career he worked in private practice for several years at Covington & Burling and Polsinelli.