US software maker Adobe has named Louise Pentland as its new chief legal officer, replacing interim legal head Gloria Chen and former general counsel Dana Rao, who departed the company last year.
Pentland joins the San Jose, California-based company from streaming service Roku, where she served as general counsel after joining in July 2024. Prior to that, she worked as chief counsel for the Walt Disney Company’s Experiences division, which oversees the media giant’s theme parks, cruise operations and other consumer products.
Earlier in her career, she spent more than seven years at payments company PayPal, most of them as chief business and legal officer, and served for more than 16 years at Nokia.
At Adobe, Pentland will lead the company’s legal and government relations teams, reporting directly to chair and CEO Shantanu Narayen.
In a press release announcing her appointment, Adobe describes Pentland as ‘a technology industry veteran with deep experience as chief legal officer at several global companies’.
Narayen adds: ‘We are excited to welcome Louise to Adobe’s leadership team. [Her] decades of experience driving transformations at global companies and leading cutting-edge legal organizations make her well suited to help drive Adobe’s continued growth.’
Meanwhile, Chen will resume her duties as chief people officer and executive vice president for employee experience after stepping in for Rao last September. Rao stood down from his position as general counsel after more than seven years in the role, having joined Adobe from Microsoft in 2012.
Writing on LinkedIn last year, Dao said he wanted to take a break to spend more time with his family and, once ‘rested and recharged’, said he would look to his next challenge.
