The longtime Amazon executive who helped lead the company’s grocery shopping efforts has just taken on a new role as senior COO at Hopin, a provider of event management software based. in London.
Gao left Amazon this summer after more than 16 years at the tech giant. She has held several positions at Amazon, most notably as technical advisor to Jeff Bezos from July 2018 to January 2020. Previous “shadows” of Bezos include Andy Jassy, the former CEO of Amazon Web Services who succeeded Bezos last month as the company’s CEO; Amit Agarwal, who runs Amazon India; and others. Gao was only the second woman to be appointed to this post.
Gao is one of many Amazon executives to leave this year, as Jassy takes the reins from Bezos as CEO. Other notable departures include Charlie Bell, a 23-year veteran of Amazon cloud computing and a member of his management team who has reportedly accepted a position at rival Microsoft; Steve Kessel, who ran Amazon’s physical store operations; and former Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke, among others.
Hopin has seen tremendous growth over the past 18 months, with the pandemic driving demand for virtual events. The company has more than 100,000 organizations using its technology, such as Twitch, The Atlantic, The New York Jets and others. It offers tools for virtual and in-person events. Hopin raised $ 450 million earlier this month at a valuation of $ 7.75 billion. It employs 800 people in 47 countries.
“Wei brings incredible technical and operational leadership experience from his time at Amazon,” wrote Johnny Boufarhat, CEO of Hopin. LinkedIn. “She will help shape the innovation underway at Hopin and provide scalable operations that will allow us to continue to create the best platform of shared experiences for our customers.”
