Snap Taps Amazon Exec Jeremi Gorman, HuffPost CEO Jared Grusd
By Janko Roettgers
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Snapchat corporate parent has poached Amazon advertising executive Jeremi Gorman as its new chief business officer while also appointing former Huffington Post CEO Jared Grusd as its new chief strategy officer.
The two executives are effectively replacing Snap’s outgoing chief strategy officer Imran Khan, who had announced his departure in September.
“I’m proud to have Jeremi and Jared join our team, where they will play an important part in shaping the next chapter for Snap,” CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in an email to Snap employees.
Gorman had been with Amazon for close to seven years, and most recently led the e-commerce giant’s global advertising sales. Before that, she worked in ad sales for Yahoo and Variety.
Grusd had been leading HuffPost as CEO for the past three years. Before that, he worked for four years as Spotify’s general counsel and global head of corporate development. Other previous stints included executive positions at AOL and Google.
In addition to these two executive additions, the company also announced a slate of additional hires on Wednesday:
- Jean Gonié, director of EU policy (previously director of public policy at Amazon) (started in October)
- Alston Cheek, director of platform partnerships (previously partnerships manager at Apple) (started in October)
- Steen Strand, director of product design – Snap Lab (previously COO and president at ICON Aircraft) (started in October)
- Ted Suh, head of music partnerships (previously VP digital music at ByteDance) (started in August)
- Kristin Southey, VP of investor relations (previously senior VP of finance and investor relations at Athene) (started in late July)
Snap has been under fire from investors for its inability to grow its user base in the face of ever-growing competition from Facebook. The company lost 3 million daily active users in its most recent quarter, but has seen ad sales accelerate. It’s stock traded below $7 on Wednesday, which translates to a market capitalization of around $8.75 billion.
