Instacart announced that it has hired the head of Facebook’s app, Fidji Simo, as its new CEO, setting her up to be the first outsider to lead the start-up last valued at $39 billion. Tom Alison, Facebook Vice President of Engineering will replace Simo as the head of the Facebook app.Alison has been at the social media company since 2010. He leads the software development of Facebook Groups, one of the key growth areas for the social network. It is an example of Facebook losing a key female exec, and a person of colour, while the company tries to improve diversity in its workplace.
Simo, 35, from France, is among the highest-ranking female executives at Facebook after COO Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Business Officer Marne Levine. Simo’s departure will create a vacancy at the head of Facebook’s main social network, a position that reports to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and is aligned with the heads of Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Simo will succeed Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta on Aug. 2. Mehta will transition to executive chairman of the board. Sumo said in the interview that it wasn’t as you can imagine, it wasn’t a one-time conversation. was over several weeks. She deeply appreciates Mark because he’s been a supporter from day one, and wanted to make sure that he understood my motivation and what I wanted to do with my life and what I was looking for.
Simo has been at Facebook since joining a product marketing role in 2011. She worked her way up by improving Facebook’s primary blue app, which she’s been in charge of since March 2019. Simo played a key role in the company’s initiatives to bring more video content to the Facebook app by way of autoplaying videos, live streaming and the Facebook Watch video streaming product.
Be First to Comment