Rob Chesnut : How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution

This fireside chat is co-hosted by Santa Cruz Works and the Santa Cruz County Business Council.

Rob Chesnut works with companies to help them develop strategies to drive integrity into their culture. He was most recently the Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb, Inc., a role he took on in late 2019 after almost four years as Airbnb’s General Counsel.

Rob is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia. He worked for 14 years with the U.S. Justice Department, where he prosecuted bank robberies, kidnappings, murder, and espionage cases, including the prosecution of CIA employee Aldrich Ames. He joined eBay in 1999 as its third lawyer, where he led eBay’s North America legal team and later founded the Internet’s first ecommerce person to person Trust and Safety operation. Rob subsequently spent nearly 6 years as the General Counsel and first attorney at digital education leader Chegg, where he helped take the company public in 2013. He joined Airbnb in 2016, where he grew the legal team from 30 to over 150 legal professionals in 20 offices around the world. His team led initiatives to promote home sharing and address regulatory issues with local governments and landlords around the world. Rob developed a popular interactive employee program, Integrity Belongs Here, to help drive ethics throughout the culture at the company.

On July 28, he published ​Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution with St Martin’s Press. He lives in San Francisco, CA.