Pinterest has finally hired its first chief marketing officer: retail executive Andréa Mallard, who previously held the same role at The Gap’s Athleta division.
Prior to her tenure at the apparel company, Mallard served as chief marketing officer at Omada Health, a digital health company, for four years. She also spent eight years with IDEO, where she lead global brand strategy as a design director for the U.S. And Europe. Mallard is also on the board of Unu Motors, an electric scooter company in Europe.
Announced Monday, Mallard actually started on October 29. She will be based at Pinterest’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Given Pinterest’s obvious platform for retailers and advertising, it might seem surprising that the popular social media brand has taken so long to appoint a CMO.
But Pinterest has been actively staffing up its C-suite in the last year, with many industry watchers expecting an IPO in mid-2019. Earlier this year, Pinterest hired Francoise Brougher, previously at Square as well as Google, as its first chief operating officer. Mallard will now report to Brougher, and will oversee the global marketing and creative teams.
Pinterest also just opened its first office in Canada, spearheaded by Erin Elofson, a veteran leader on sales teams at Facebook and Microsoft’s operations in Canada. User growth is always the golden goose in Silicon Valley. (Just look at Facebook and Twitter monthly earnings reports and subsequent coverage to recognize how much Wall Street cares about these figures.)
Overall, Pinterest says it now has more than 250 million monthly active users worldwide, growing at a rate of 25% year-over-year, with more than 80% of signups stem from outside the United States.