Evan Spiegel, CEO and co-founder of Snap, recently promoted former longtime WarnerMedia/Time Warner exec Kristen O’Hara to the company’s top sales position — but changed his mind two days later, Bloomberg reported. O’Hara is now exiting Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, after less than two months.
The about-face came when Spiegel, 28, decided to instead hire Jeremi Gorman as its new chief business officer. Gorman was previously head of global advertising sales at Amazon.com, where she had worked for more than six years.
A Snap spokesman confirmed that O’Hara’s departure but declined to comment further.
In an email from Spiegel to Snap’s business solutions team provided by the company, the Snap CEO said, “In her time here, Kristen had an immediate and positive impact on the company. She had a deep understanding of our business from the outset and forged strong client relationships that we will continue to build upon. I will miss the leadership and enthusiasm she brought to the organization and wish her only continued success.”
O’Hara had joined Snap in September as VP of business solutions, after 14 years with Time Warner (now known as WarnerMedia under AT&T’s ownership). Most recently, she served as chief marketing officer for global media at the company, where she was a key architect of Time Warner’s Medialab research group and led data strategy. Earlier in her career, she worked at Time Inc. and ad agency Y&R.
O’Hara informed her Snap colleagues Monday (Oct. 29) that she was leaving because of a restructuring on the team, per Bloomberg’s report.
Along with Gorman’s hire, Snap also appointed ex-Huffington Post CEO Jared Grusd as its new chief strategy officer. Gorman and Grusd effectively replace Imran Khan, who announced his departure as Snap’s chief strategy officer in September.
Last Thursday (Oct. 25), Snap reported 186 million daily active users for Q3, a decline of 2 million from the prior quarter, but beat Wall Street financial expectations.