Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women on corporate boards have hit a meaningful milestone, Daily Harvest founder Rachel Drori is confident the company can come back from a crisis, and TikTok undergoes a shakeup. Happy Friday!
- Clocking out. For five years, V. Pappas has been a source of stability at TikTok. In the platform’s wildest days—a CEO's abbreviated four-month tenure, the scrutiny of former President Donald Trump—Pappas steered the ByteDance-owned short-form video app.
Yesterday, Pappas announced that they would step down as COO. “I took a gamble on what was then a completely unknown company,” Pappas wrote in a note to employees. “Today I stand proud that we deliver a product that resonates with over 1 billion people around the world. TikTok is a household name.” Pappas will stay on as an adviser.
With much of ByteDance and TikTok’s top leadership based in China, Los Angeles-based Pappas served as a face of the app in the U.S. to everyone from users to regulators. Pappas was hired as general manager for the U.S. in 2018 and then served as global interim head of TikTok in 2020 after CEO Kevin Mayer’s abrupt exit. They became COO in 2021. The platform’s explosive growth and the unusual visibility of their COO job placed Pappas at No. 49 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list last year.
Earlier this year, Pappas shared publicly that they’d started identifying as nonbinary, using both she/her and they/them pronouns. Pappas said they'd long preferred to go by "V," the first initial of their given first name, with friends, but had begun to use "they/them" pronouns more recently. The announcement was notable; Pappas may be the first C-level executive at a major tech company to openly identify as nonbinary.
In their departing note, the former YouTube exec said the “time is right” to “refocus on entrepreneurial passions.” Pappas cited innovation in generative A.I., robotics, and blockchain as reasons for their renewed focus on entrepreneurship.
Pappas' departure as COO occurred alongside a broader executive restructuring at TikTok that included the hiring of Zenia Mucha as chief brand and communications officer.
Mucha is a two-decade Disney veteran known for her forceful defense of the company. She coached TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew ahead of his appearance before Congress in the U.S. As TikTok deals with the growing threat of bans and continued scrutiny of its ownership and the security of American users’ data, Mucha is sure to be a vocal advocate for the platform here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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