One of the highest-paid CEOs in the US is a Filipino American

Fil-Am CEO Kiwi Camara surpassed the income of Apple’s Tim Cook in 2022 | Photo from DISCO/Twitter

Being one of the highest-paid CEOs in the United States doesn’t happen overnight. Just ask 39-year-old Filipino-American Kiwi Camara.

The co-founder, chief executive officer, and director of “AI-driven legal technology” firm Disco, Camara can add another milestone to his name: earning over $100 million last year to effectively surpass Apple CEO Tim Cook’s salary.

This impressive feat of earning a total of $109 million in stock options combined with his $500,000 salary last year catapulted Camara into an elite group of only nine executives that crossed the $100 million threshold, which includes Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Oracle’s Safra Catz, and Live Nation’s Michael Rapino.

Photo from Kush Katakia/Twitter

The unconventional path of Kiwi Camara

Camara was born in Manila, Philippines, but moved to Cleveland when he was one year old. His streak of career breakthroughs began in 2004 when, at 19 years old, he earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School to become its youngest-ever graduate.

But, his path to success wasn’t without its hurdles. In March 2002, it was revealed that Camara, during his time at Harvard Law School, used some racial slurs in the outline of an article depicting the legal covenants restricting Black people from buying land.

Kiwi Camara earned $110 million in pay last year as CEO of CS Disco, a legal tech company worth just $500 million. https://t.co/yq7bYbt1Al

— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) July 5, 2023

Despite this controversy and after apologizing in an open letter, he started his own firm, Camara & Sibley in Austin, Texas. It took up pro bono cases like defending a client’s rights in one of the first file-sharing cases.

Fast forward to 2013, Camara’s brainchild CS Disco was born, which has been revamping the rules on legal technology. Armed with modern innovations like cloud computing and AI, his firm focuses on what really matters—winning all legal battles and securing justice for their clients.

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With Camara at the helm, CS Disco reached new heights in the legal tech scene when their IPO growth surged from 37 percent to 67 percent. However, not everything was smooth sailing as they experienced fluctuations when they entered the New York Stock Exchange.

It's #LegalWeek in NYC and we caught up with Kiwi Camara, CEO of @CSDISCO, to talk about how the company's technology is streamlining legal processes from start to finish. #NYSEFloorTalk pic.twitter.com/rtB3Ul7vtZ

— NYSE 🏛 (@NYSE) March 21, 2023

CS Disco’s shares peaked at $65.88 in Sept 2021 but have since spiraled down. Despite the company’s impressive earnings of $135.2 million in 2022, it also reported a net loss of $70.8 million.