Password management platform 1Password, which was valued at $6.8bn earlier this year, has added a former top Shopify lawyer as its first chief legal office.

Erin Zipes has joined the Toronto-based company after a seven-year stint at Shopify, where she served latterly as vice president, associate general counsel and corporate secretary and helped to take the company public before leaving last December. 

Zipes said she was a longstanding customer of 1Password, which counts Shopify, IBM, Slack, Snowflake and Under Armour among the more than 100,000 companies using its password management and credentials security platform. 

At 1Password, Zipes will focus on growing the legal team following the company’s expansion during the pandemic to more than 800 employees. In January the company raised $620m in a series C fundraising round at a $6.8bn valuation, making it one of Canada’s most valuable tech firms. 

The round was led by Iconiq Growth, with Accel, Lightspeed Ventures and Tiger Global among the participants. Another was Backbone Angels, a collective of angel investors that Zipes founded with nine other women executives during her time at Shopify that backs companies led by women and non-binary people. 

"I had the pleasure of getting to know Erin in her role as a founding member of Backbone Angels. Her enthusiasm for 1Password and impressive experience makes her a natural fit for the company," said Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password. "Erin's commitment to building a diverse, inclusive and business-focused legal function, as well as experience leading Shopify through their IPO, will be essential to fuel our trajectory."

Zipes began her legal career in 2005 as an associate Stikeman Elliott and also worked at Gowling before moving over to health sciences company Nordion, where she served as associate general counsel. 

Zipes commented: "One of my primary goals is the growth of my team. We’ve just posted three new roles and expect to continue growing for the foreseeable future. To put our growth trajectory into perspective, 1Password has grown its team by more than 300% over the last 24 months to more than 800 employees, and so our legal team needs to continue to scale to support the company’s needs."