Lisa Salinas Schneider Makes Good on a Promise to Herself at SpyCloud

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The same thing that contributed to Lisa Salinas Schneider becoming a general counsel at the age of forty is evident earlier in her educational journey. She turned down five Ivy League colleges (including the “Big H”) to attend the much more personalized and business-rigorous program at the University of Texas. That was a sign.

A year after being asked to move inside the organization as legal counsel, Salinas Schneider walked away from Apple. She’d worked in Big Tech exactly long enough to know it wasn’t what she wanted out of her career, regardless of the prestige it may bring. This was also a sign.

In 2024, Salinas Schneider became GC of an internal legal department she built from scratch, starting back in 2020, at cybersecurity startup SpyCloud. She’s already successfully exited one company, and she foresees the same outcome for SpyCloud. She has built two legal departments from scratch. And she is dangerously close to achieving her childhood dream job: “Queen of the Universe.”

The GC has accomplished all this without an Ivy League or big law résumé. And she’s done it fast. It’s quite a place to be for someone who had to make so many early career moves due to the Great Recession and the brutal market for lawyers that followed for the next half-decade. She weathered it. And she, ultimately, won.

The Startup Expert

Winning, for Salinas Schenider, is not about outmaneuvering a counterpart or stacking exits. Winning is arriving at a solution where everyone at the table accomplishes what they need, whether it be a contract that works operationally, a board strategy that aligns risk and growth, or a product that tames a thorny legal question without stifling innovation.

That mindset is tailor-made for startups and cybersecurity, where she currently spends her days in the strange intersection of data privacy, national security, AI-enabled criminal behavior, and global regulatory regimes that never quite keep up.

Inside SpyCloud, Salinas Schneider is as deliberate about culture as she is about contracts. She describes her department as “a rehab center for traumatized corporate employees,” particularly women and working parents who arrive expecting micromanagement and fear-based leadership.

The GC’s operating model is the opposite: hire smart program operators who can translate legal requirements into real-world processes, give them broad autonomy, and pressure-test their ideas without shaming them when something needs rethinking.

She codified those expectations into a set of team culture norms to capture how her team experiences working together, not just how she wants it to look on paper. The first line, “Humans First, Pros Always,” shows up in choices like flexing deadlines when a child is sick, normalizing eating during packed Zoom days, and insisting that no one should have to code-switch to feel safe contributing. In a field obsessed with threat surfaces and attack vectors, she is quietly building psychological safety as a strategic advantage.

“I know that word gets thrown around a lot these days, but for me, ‘psychological safety’ is creating the kind of place where people can come to work and truly be themselves,” Salinas Schneider says. “You walk people through your thinking and don’t just tell them what to do.”

Continuing to Grow

Salinas Schneider has tenacity in her blood. Her parents, residents of South Texas who date so far back in the state that they joke that the border was drawn around them, elevated themselves from migrant farm workers to a physician and a teacher. Her mother eventually left teaching to manage her father’s office, where Salinas Schneider watched her negotiate with insurance companies and manage employees—a formative business experience for the future GC.

Growing up in Laredo provided a novel outlook in the US. Salinas Schneider didn’t feel like a minority. That provided a much different outlook as she aged.

“At a community or governance level, I tend to see how power structures operate without immediately attaching it to a question of race,” she says.

“In a career that’s been heavy in governance, heavy on multi-jurisdictional issues that intersect with data privacy and national security, I think it’s allowed me to cut straight to the issue, and I know that makes my experience very different than what a lot of other people experienced growing up,” she says.

While she’s accomplished so much before technical “middle age,” Salinas Schneider is still working hard to continue evolving. After becoming a mother, she began to reevaluate what actually keeps her engaged and happy in her life. She deleted Instagram from her phone, forcing herself to use the clunky browser version. She recommends the change.

“For me, ‘psychological safety’ is creating the kind of place where people can come to work and truly be themselves. You walk people through your thinking and don’t just tell them what to do.”

Lisa Salinas Schneider

“I realized that I had replaced genuine check-ins with heart emojis,” the GC explains. “Instead of a DM, I could meet up with someone at the farmer’s market and have a real interaction.”

She’s also channeled her governance instincts into her personal life, joining the parent board at her child’s daycare and, inevitably, getting involved with some of the business of the organization.

When she left Apple, Salinas Schneider was dedicated to becoming a startup GC. She’s done just that. There will be another challenge. Another exit. Another win. But she loves what she’s doing. That is very clear. And that’s what makes the difference. 

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