“I like challenges,” Floum says. “I’m not shy about
pushing for change when it seems appropriate.”
But in fact, he was exactly the type of
person Visa wanted. To begin with, the
company was facing a number of antitrust
issues. Ariela St. Pierre, head of global
governance and corporate secretary at
Visa, says Floum’s background made
him the ideal candidate for the job. “Josh
was a successful antitrust and business
litigator,” he says. “He could speak in a
very informed way about the legal risks
the company faced.”
But there was more to it. Floum’s
background would serve Visa well in
its ongoing legal challenges—the price
of doing business as a leader in its
field—but the company was looking
for something more. It was looking
for change. Floum, described by his
longtime friend Robert Stolebarger
as “absolutely a guy who embraces
change,” was whom it needed.
FLOUM COMES FROM A FAMILY OF
lawyers. His father, Richard H. Floum,
was the lead trial lawyer for Dern, Mason
& Floum in Century City, Calif., before
his passing in 1996; his clients included
the Jackson 5. Floum’s brother, Alex, is
a civil litigator with The Williams Firm
in Walnut Creek, Calif., and Floum’s
wife, Margaret O’Donnell Floum, is also
a lawyer, who in the past has worked
with her husband on at least one pro
bono immigration case. Floum says “It’s
too early [to tell]” if his two children
(daughter Jessica is an undergraduate at
Northwestern University and son Jackson
is in high school) will follow their parents
into the family business.
As a young boy, Floum often
accompanied his father to court where he
sat, rapt, while the elder Floum worked.
“[My father] loved [the law] so much, had
so much passion for it,” Floum remembers.
Inspired by his father, young Floum saw
law as “a good way to do well and do good
at the same time.”
“Initially,” he says, “I saw life as an
attorney as being in the public policy civil
rights area.”
Floum’s father also instilled in his son a
love for the ocean. Family vacations were
almost always beachside. On occasion,
the Floums would spot a dolphin knifing
through the water offshore. “It was almost
a religious experience,” he says. “When the
opportunity to do something for dolphins
came along, I knew that was something I
wanted to do.”
That opportunity came in 1986 while
Floum was working at Heller, Ehrman,
White & McAullife, in San Francisco.
He became involved with the firm’s pro
bono practice, taking on a number of
political asylum, civil rights and poverty
law cases before joining the nonprofit
Earth Island Institute in its efforts to
U.S. Department of Commerce and the
National Marine Fisheries Service over its
failure to follow laws protecting dolphins.
Floum, who describes himself as an
environmentalist, sunk his teeth into the
case and didn’t let go, then continued his
association with the Institute for several
years, working on a series of cases, long
after he left Heller Ehrman first for Legal
Strategies Group and then for Holme,
Roberts and Owen. In advocating for the
Earth Island Institute, Floum took on
the governments of several countries,
including the United States.
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