Alexis Kerry Ohanian, is an Armenian-American Internet entrepreneur and investor who is co-founder and executive chairman of the social news website Reddit and the husband of tennis player Serena Williams.

He also co-founded the early stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital, helped launch the travel search website Hipmunk, and started the social enterprise Breadpig.

Open Internet activism

In late 2010 and early 2011, Ohanian spoke out against Congress's Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate's PROTECT IP Act. He helped lead the Internet-enabled campaign that eventually overturned the two bills. Ohanian spoke to members of Congress, helped launch the national anti-SOPA/PIPA protests that took place on January 18, 2012, and spoke at the rally in New York that was organized by NY Tech Meetup.

In October 2012, Ohanian teamed up with Reddit General Manager Erik Martin and embarked on the Internet 2012 Bus Tour from Denver, CO to Danville, KY to campaign for the open Internet during the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. One of the campaign stops spurred the idea for a possible "National Geek Day" in Washington D.C.

In response to his work advocating for the Open Internet, The Daily Dot named Ohanian number one in their top ten most influential activists of 2012, and Forbes Magazine dubbed him "Mayor of the Internet".

In May 2014, Ohanian began lobbying the FCC to support net neutrality, culminating with a day-long phone-a-thon into the FCC and Congress on January 15, 2015.

Victoria Taylor firing

On July 2, 2015, Reddit fired communications director Victoria Taylor, a well-liked administrator who co-ordinated celebrity interviews from Reddit's New York office. In protest, volunteer moderators of the IAmA community set their forum to private, effectively turning it off, and other volunteer moderators followed suit, because of "anger at the way the company routinely demands that the volunteers and community accept major changes that reduce [their] efficiency and increase [their] workload." Initially, interim CEO Ellen Pao was blamed for the dismissal. Harassment which was already being directed toward Pao in relation to other controversies intensified and she resigned a week later.

However, a moderator of IAmA posted on July 3 that "Chooter (Victoria) was let go as an admin by u/kn0thing [Alexis Ohanian]".This was not widely reported until the aftermath of Pao's resignation when Ohanian elaborated on his role in Taylor's dismissal. On July 12, former CEO Yishan Wong informed the Reddit community that Taylor was fired by "the CEO's boss" and accused Ohanian of scapegoating. Ohanian countered that even though the AMA / IAmA changes came from him, he still reported to Pao. As was done for Ellen Pao, a petition was uploaded to Change.org asking Alexis Ohanian to step down. In 2017, Pao criticized Ohanian for avoiding the fallout by attending The Championships, Wimbledon in the days immediately following Taylor's firing.