- Snap has come back after a string of troubles in 2018.
- The credit goes to cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel and the top executives who are helping him chart out the next phase of the company's growth.
- From chief business officer Jeremi Gorman to chief strategy officer Jared Grusd, here's a who's who of Snap's new leadership team.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Snap has charted a successful comeback.
The company's botched redesign, increased competition, a plateauing user base, and a revolving door of executives are now in the rearview mirror, with users, marketers, and Wall Street bullish on the disappearing-messaging app once again.
The credit for the company's turnaround goes to cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel and his top executives who are helping him chart out the next phase of the company's growth.
These deputies oversee everything from the company's camera-focused engineering teams and its burgeoning ad business to its relationship with investors and Wall Street.
Here are the top executives who help Spiegel run Snap. They're listed by seniority in alphabetical order by last name, starting with C-suite executives, followed by senior VP and director-level executives.
SEE ALSO: Snap beats Q2 revenue estimates but falls short on user growth
As Snap's cofounder and CEO, Evan Spiegel wields the most influence and calls the shots on all business and product decisions.
Snap's hands-on cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel has led the company through towering highs and dizzying lows, from to its IPO in 2017 to its unpopular app redesign in 2018 and an impressive comeback in the markets in 2019.
Considered a product genius by many, the 30-year-old is the brains behind some of Snapchat's key features, like disappearing messages, Stories, and vertical video format.
In recent years, Spiegel has been delegating more responsibility to trusted lieutenants and working on his management style. But insiders say that he is still "extraordinarily involved" in driving the company's biggest business and product decisions.
Over the past year, Snap has been on an upward trajectory in terms of its user numbers and stock price, which has risen from a low of $4.99 in late 2018 to $22 in recent trading. Snap's ad growth has slowed during the pandemic but it's been a safe haven for some advertisers who are souring on Facebook.
Spiegel founded Snapchat with Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown (who left soon after the founding) while they were undergraduate students at Stanford, and he alone exercises voting control over a majority of the company's voting power, per its 2019 Annual Report.
Derek Andersen took over as chief financial officer in 2019 and is steering Snap's ad business through the pandemic.
Derek Andersen joined Snap as a VP of finance in 2018 and was promoted to chief financial officer in May 2019. He took over the position from Lara Sweet, who was the interim CFO and is now chief people officer.
In announcing Andersen's promotion, Spiegel highlighted his cost efficiency and strategic planning initiatives. Prior to Snap, Andersen was a finance executive at Fox Interactive and Amazon.
Andersen has played a significant role in help guiding Snap through the pandemic, which has led ad business across companies — including Snap — to take a significant hit. In Snap's recent earnings call with investors following the report of its second-quarter financials, Andersen said the company's success was dependent on how long the pandemic continues and the toll it takes on advertisers.
Jeremi Gorman is Snap's chief business officer and is credited with orchestrating its turnaround.
The former Amazon exec and sales marketing vet was a star hire for Snap in November 2018 after a tumultuous year of executive churn and has been credited with the company's turnaround, with revenue up every quarter since her arrival.
As Snap's chief business officer, Jeremi Gorman is charged with building out the company's business strategy, including revenue, and the performance of its ad business. In a little over a year, she has revamped the company's sales organization, and helped bolster its ad offering with products like video ad units and a sophisticated direct-response business.
Wall Street and Madison Avenue have responded well to Gorman, with advertisers doubling the amount they commit to spend upfront on Snap campaigns over the course of the year, according to Snap.
At Amazon, she headed global advertising sales, overseeing business intelligence and analytics as well as the ad business' international expansion.
Jared Grusd is Snap's chief strategy officer and has been extending Snapchat's reach to new users and countries.
Jared Grusd has been Snap's chief strategy officer since 2018, succeeding Imran Khan, who was Snap's first chief strategy officer and guided the company to an IPO.
Grusd oversees content and international strategy, including partnerships and corporate development, and is responsible for expanding Snap's user base beyond its core demographic of 18- to 34-year-olds.
Under him, Snap has boosted its international presence over the past year, and seen what he called "extraordinary growth" in India, for example. The company has announced plans to open its South East Asia office in Singapore to boost its presence in the Asia Pacific region.
The former HuffPost CEO is an attorney by training, and his career has included leadership positions at Spotify, Google, and Oath (formerly AOL). He also serves on the board of SoulCycle and is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and member of the University of Chicago Law School Advisory Council.
Julie Henderson is a communications executive who serves as the gatekeeper between Snap and the media as its chief communications officer.
Julie Henderson is Snap's chief communications officer, and serves as its chief spokeswoman while leading the company's communications strategy, reporting directly to Spiegel.
She replaced Snap's former VP of Communications Mary Ritti in 2019 and has made Snap more open by expanding its interactions with the press in a shift from its early days as a secretive startup.
Prior to Snap, she was EVP and chief communications officer at 21st Century Fox, where she led global communications focusing on corporate financial matters, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory issues and litigation, and managed the 21st Century Fox corporate brand.
Kenny Mitchell is a marketing veteran who serves as the company's first chief marketing officer.
Kenny Mitchell became Snap's first CMO last summer when CEO Evan Spiegel installed him with other new execs including Gorman and Grusd after a tumultuous 2018.
Mitchell led Snap's first global advertising campaign, helped scale advertisers' campaigns on the platform, and helped market shows including "Nikita Unfiltered" and Will Smith's "Will From Home" on Discover, landing him on Business Insider's 2020 most innovative CMOs list.
He recently got Snap into sports sponsorships by getting a deal with the Los Angeles Rams, getting attention for the app as a place to see sports-related content while live sports is off with the team debuting their new uniforms on the app.
Mitchell was a Snapchat fan while at PepsiCo, where he oversaw the viral Gatorade Dunk AR Lens for the Super Bowl and its Serena Williams-themed Snap Ad game and leading campaigns for McDonald's on the platform during his time there.
Matthew Moore is responsible for the security of employees and Snapchat users as chief information and security officer.
As Snap's chief information and security officer, Matthew Moore oversees a massive group of engineers who manage corporate tech security and the safety of Snapchat users. Moore's team builds app features related to privacy engineering, fighting spam, and issues with abuse.
Moore is a 10-year veteran of the security team at Google, where he was most recently Engineering Director for Security and Privacy. He left Google to join Snap in 2018, replacing fellow Google alum Jad Boutros.
Bobby Murphy is Spiegel's cofounder and has been Snap's CTO since 2012.
Bobby Murphy is Snapchat's cofounder and has been its chief technology officer since 2012. He leads engineering and research at the company.
He is credited with building the core technical tenets of Snapchat's app, and played a leading role at the company's second Partner Summit this year, announcing all the major updates relating to Snap's camera and AR efforts, including Local Lenses and SnapML.
Murphy and Spiegel maintain ultimate control over the company, representing approximately 99% of the voting power of its outstanding capital stock as of December 31, 2019, per its Annual Report. Murphy is also a member of Snap's board of directors.
Mike O'Sullivan is Snap's most powerful lawyer and has also taken strict measure to tamp down internal employee leaks.
Mike O'Sullivan has been Snap's general counsel since 2017, taking the position just six months after the company's IPO and a week after the departure of his predecessor Chris Handman.
Snap's top lawyer previously worked for Munger, Tolles & Olson, the same firm where the Snap CEO's dad, John W. Spiegel, is a partner. While there, O'Sullivan represented Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin during its IPO, as well as Bank of America during the 2008 financial crisis.
O'Sullivan was also responsible for a memo sent to Snap employees in early 2018, in which he stated that staff who are caught leaking information to reporters could lose their jobs and have "any and all legal remedies" pursued against them.
Dom Perella oversees Snap policies and practices to ensure the company is complying with legal issues.
As deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer, Dom Perella guides the company through litigation and compliance issues. He serves as the global head of litigation and oversees global communication and competition regulatory matters.
Perella was behind the design of Snap's compliance program to ensure it adheres to proper regulatory policies with automated due diligence and risk-based audits. He worked on handling legal and privacy issues regarding Snapchat's Stories feature that curates user-submitted videos around the world.
Earlier, he was a partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, DC, where he was a member of the firm's team arguing Supreme Court cases.
Lara Sweet manages the hiring and experiences of Snap's thousands of employees around the world as chief people officer.
Since joining Snap in 2016, Lara Sweet has served as Snap's controller, chief accounting officer, and even its interim chief financial officer in early 2019 after CFO Tim Stone announced he was leaving the company.
Since May 2019, Sweet has filled the role of Snap's chief people officer, overseeing Snap's employee experience and hiring practices, and managing talent acquisition strategies and human resources teams — fending off companies like tech companies like Quibi and TikTok that have continued to heavily poach from Snap's ranks.
Snap launched an internal investigation in July after former employees complained of a "whitewashed" culture and came forward with allegations of racism and sexism.
Prior to Snap, Sweet spent six years in executive finance roles at AOL.
As chairman of Snap's board of directors, Michael Lynton has seen the company mature since he first invested it in 2012.
Michael Lynton is a longtime movie executive who left his role as CEO of Sony Entertainment in 2017 to become the chairman of Snap's board of directors.
He was one of Snap's earliest investors, putting an estimated $200,000 into it in early 2012. He joined Snap's board in April 2013, and has watched Snap — and its founders — mature from a young startup to a Silicon Valley staple.
Lynton is also board chairman of Warner Music Group.
As VP of product, Jacob Andreou oversees new features and formatting decisions for the Snapchat platform.
A longtime product designer at Snap, Jacob Andreou was promoted to VP of product in April 2018 after the departure of Tom Conrad. In that position, Andreou oversees the team making decisions on the Snapchat platform's format and new features.
Since joining Snap in 2015, Andreou been a close associate to Evan Spiegel, and while Spiegel is still believed to control a lot of final product decisions, Andreou is embedded in the product team's day-to-day operations, insiders said.
Recently, his team unveiled Snap Minis, which lets developers build new apps within the Snapchat app. Meditation app Headspace, for example, built one that lets users meditate in the app.
Jacob "Ba" Blackstock created Bitmoji 13 years ago and has continued to head up the project since Snap acquired his company in 2016.
Snap acquired Jacob "Ba" Blackstock's Bitmoji-making app Bitstrips for more than $100 million in early 2016 to cash in on its ability for users to make cartoon versions of themselves.
Under the leadership of Bitstrips founder Blackstock, Bitmoji have grown beyond stickers to 3D characters that can live outside of Snapchat in text messages and third-party apps.
Vanessa Guthrie helps lead Snap's foray into original content through its Discover section.
Snap has invested heavily in recent years in exclusive content under Vanessa Guthrie, who as head of originals and director of content, helped launch short-form Shows in 2016 and Originals in 2018.
Under Guthrie, the daily number of Snapchat users watching Shows increased more than 45% year-over-year in the second quarter, according to the company.
Prior to joining Snap in 2016, Guthrie was an SVP of brand partnerships at iHeart Media.
Jerry Hunter played a major role in the redesign of Snapchat's buggy Android app as SVP of engineering.
As SVP of engineering, Jerry Hunter led Snap's major rewrite of its unpopular Android app to make it faster and smoother than the old version. The long-awaited redesign was released in 2019 and helped company regain some of the millions of users it lost.
Hunter was poached in 2016 from Amazon, where he was responsible for its data centers. He initially joined Snap as its VP of core engineering and was promoted after the departure of predecessor Tim Sehn.
Steve Hwang is a former lawyer who now serves as Snap's VP of strategy and corporate development.
Steve Hwang is a longtime employee of Snap who started overseeing legal operations and now is the VP of strategy and corporate development, hunting for software and hardware deals and acquisitions that can help bolster Snap's long-term vision.
In the past year, Hwang's team has overseen deals like Snap selling location attribution company Placed to Foursquare and the acquisition of Ukranian computer vision startup AI Factory, whose technology ran Snapchat's new Cameos animated selfie-based video feature.
Insiders consider Hwang to be a part of Spiegel's inner circle, and his name first came into the public eye with the Sony email hacks in 2015, which revealed several secret acquisitions that he orchestrated for the company.
Radhika Kakkar is responsible for keeping Snap's ad business running smoothly.
As VP of global operations, Radhika Kakkar works closely with Jeremi Gorman to ensure the ad business runs smoothly. She oversees Snap's customer support and online sales internationally and helps manage revenue and user operations.
Before joining Snap in 2015, Kakkar was a partner at consulting firm Accenture, where she worked for more than a decade.
Luke Kallis is an ad sales vet who works with some of Snap's biggest advertisers.
Luke Kallis is Snap's VP of US advertiser solutions and works closely with new VP of Americas Peter Naylor to make sure advertisers get their money's worth on Snapchat.
Kallis has looked after some of Snap's biggest advertisers, including Universal, Warner Bros., Nike, and Dunkin'. His longstanding relationships in the entertainment industry helped Snapchat get its start in advertising and pull off its first splashy ad in 2014, a video trailer for Universal's horror film "Ouija."
Prior to Snap, he worked at Vevo, IGN Entertainment, MySpace, and Facebook.
Hired in 2019, Oona King is Snap's first VP of diversity and inclusion.
Snap was founded back in 2011, but it took the company until last year to hire its first VP specifically for diversity and inclusion efforts in Oona King.
King reports to Lara Sweet and oversees much of Snap's company culture, which is undergoing an internal investigation into racism and sexism allegations.
King was poached from Google, where she led diversity strategy for YouTube and its parent company. She previously headed up diversity efforts at UK broadcast station Channel 4 and was a member of British Parliament.
Nima Khajehnouri handles the engineering side of Snap's ad business and built its advertising platform from the ground up.
Responsibilities for building Snap's scalable, automated advertising platform fall to Nima Khajehnouri, Snap's VP of monetization engineering.
He brings a deep background in ad tech and ad measurement and monetization, and has made Snap's ad business more automated and technical with auction-based buying and measurement.
Khajehnouri joined Snap in 2015, succeeding Stuart Bowers.
Betsy Kenny Lack stewards Snap's corporate brand and identity.
Betsy Kenny Lack was brought on by former Snap chief strategy officer Imran Khan in 2016 as head of global brand strategy.
She's been in charge of revamping the company's branding, doing buzzy stunts like an eye-catching yellow Ferris wheel at the Cannes Lions festival in 2017.
Prior to Snap, Lack worked for Condé Nast's Vanity Fair for eight years, helping make its New Establishment conference a profitable business.
Sean Mills leads Snap's original content efforts on the Discover platform as its Senior Director of Content.
Senior Director of Content Sean Mills has led Snap's push into original content through its news and entertainment section, Discover.
The five-year company vet heads up Snap Originals, its roster of short-form, scripted-video series, which now spans 350 partners in 15 countries, including partnerships with Disney, ESPN, NBC, ViacomCBS, the NBA, and the NFL.
In recent months, his team has made news an increasing priority with "Happening Now"— a product that converts news updates into single Snaps. It's also trying to incorporate AR into its programming slate.
User time spent watching shows on Snapchat doubled in the first quarter of this year, while Snap Originals have been watched by more than half of the Gen Z population in the US, according to Mills.
Prior to joining Snapchat, Mills was president of video startup NowThis and president of The Onion.
Peter Naylor is an ad sales vet and Snap's most recent high-profile hire.
Hulu ad sales vet Peter Naylor is Snap's latest executive hire, brought on in May by Jeremi Gorman to lead advertising in the Americas.
Naylor spent the past six years building Hulu's $1 billion-plus ad business, selling new, non-invasive ad formats like binge and pause ads and bringing direct-to-consumer advertisers to Hulu — experiences that will come in handy as Snap tries to grow its appeal with direct-response and DTC advertisers.
Naylor's role is a newly created position, with Luke Kallis, Snap's VP of US advertiser solutions, and Dominic Rioux, its VP emerging advertiser solutions, reporting to him. Naylor reports to Gorman.
Eitan Pilipski works closely with Bobby Murphy to lead Snap's AR and camera engineering.
Snap has differentiated its flagship app Snapchat from other social apps with its push into augmented reality over the past few years.
But Snapchat doesn't just see AR as puppy ears, barfing rainbows, or dancing hot dog filters but as part of a post-smartphone world where experiential computing transcends mobile screens.
Ethan Pilipski is the engineering exec tasked with bringing that vision to life, working closely with Bobby Murphy on tech and product functions involving AR and the camera including features such as Lens Studio and Scan.
Pilipski recently integrated the Lens Studio software into its Spectacles hardware and introduced a voice functionality to its Scan feature that lets people activate AR filters with voice commands and ask the camera to do things like turn their hair pink.
David Roter tries to keep Snap in ad agencies' good graces.
As Snap's VP of global agency partnerships, David Roter is tasked with deepening its ad agency relationships and turn them into long-term partnerships.
Roter's agency and video experience has played directly to Snap's ambitions, and in a little over a year, he has helped alter the platform's perception as a one-off ad buy to an option many agencies are taking more seriously.
Roter recently told Business Insider that advertisers had committed twice as much money to Snap in 2020 as they did in 2019, calling it "a tangible sign" that Snapchat had become a core part of many large advertisers' strategy.
Before Snap, Roter spent five years at Twitter and about 10 years at ESPN. Most recently, he spent two years as the head of global revenue and partnerships for The Players' Tribune.
Ben Schwerin is behind some of Snap's most notable partnerships in recent years.
As Snap's VP of partnerships, Ben Schwerin is responsible for helping the company land partnerships and partner integrations so Snap's technology can live outside its ecosystem.
Over the past year, he has led the company's efforts on Snap Kit, which lets developers integrate and build with Snapchat so they can do things like take Stories to third-party apps like Tinder or helping brands like Nike bring Snapchat's AR Lenses to its new wellness app.
Today, more than 800 apps have integrated with Snap Kit and nearly 150 million people use these integrations every month, Schwerin said at the company's latest Partner Summit.
Before Snapchat, Schwerin cofounded a business communications firm called Fenway Strategies and served as an aide to Bill Clinton and rock group U2.
Peter Sellis drives many of Snap's ad and consumer products.
As Snap's senior director of product management, Peter Sellis helps the company's engineers and designers ship products that will appeal to advertisers and users.
Sellis has put his stamp on some of Snapchat's most widely recognized features, from sponsored face lenses and geofilters to shoppable Snap Ads. He also led the development of Snap Publisher and Snapchat Ads Manager's automated self-service tool for marketers.
Before Snap, Sellis was the COO of influencer network HelloSociety, which was acquired by The New York Times. At Snap, he reports to VP of product Jacob Andreou.
A longtime political insider, Jennifer Park Stout is tasked with shaping Snap's global policy and dealing with government entities around the world.
Jennifer Park Stout is a longtime political insider who's leveraged her ties in Washington, DC, as Snap's VP of global policy. She's been tasked in recent years with dealing with government entities as Snap expands globally.
Prior to joining Snap in 2017, Stout served as the deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State John Kerry.
Steen Strand heads up Snap Labs, which works on the company's Spectacles AR efforts Spiegel has prioritized.
Snap's smart sunglasses, Spectacles, have been a much-hyped part of Spiegel's vision of a future dominated by augmented reality hardware. Steen Strand is leading the charge as director of hardware, leading Snap Lab.
Under Strand, Snap Labs debuted Spectacles 3, a $380 product that lets you record pictures and videos using 3D filters and AR features. Snap hasn't released sales or revenue numbers for the most recent hardware version, but Business Insider has determined Spectacles 3 to be a major letdown.
Strand has been in charge of Snap Lab since the end of 2018, outlasting the multiple VPs who led it and quickly departed the company in the year prior.
Strand reports to Jerry Hunter.
Katherine Tassi is charged with protecting personal privacy in Snap products and featured as VP of privacy and product.
As other tech companies scramble to show they prioritize consumer privacy, Snap has long claimed it emphasizes private communication and ephemerality.
VP and Deputy General Counsel for Privacy and Product Katherine Tassi is tasked with ensuring that personal privacy is core to all Snap's products and features. When the European Union's new data protection policy took effect in 2019, Tassi was charged with making sure Snap was adhering to GDPR guidelines.
Prior to joining Snap in 2016, Tassi oversaw data security and protection at Uber and Facebook.
Claire Valoti oversees the company's growing business in non-US markets as VP of international.
Claire Valoti is Snap's most senior executive outside of the US, based in London. She is oversees the company's growing business in non-US markets, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Middle East, and Australia.
Valoti comes from Facebook, leaving in 2016 to head up Snap's UK operations. She reports directly to Jeremi Gorman.