Aussie Vanessa Pappas becomes global COO of TikTok
Los Angeles-based Australian Vanessa Pappas has taken over the role of global COO of TikTok.
As TMN reported last August, she began acting as interim CEO midway through last year.
She had joined in November 2018 from YouTube, where she was head of creative insights, and took on the interim CEO role at TikTok when Kevin Mayer quit after three months.
At the time, President Trump was threatening to ban the app in the US. Responding “We’re not planning on going anywhere”, Pappas initiated a lawsuit against the government.
She called his bluff by initiating talks to sell the US operations to US companies Oracle and Walmart, but the crisis ended when Trump was toppled in the White House.
Pappas’ new COO role comes as TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance also expanded the role of its Singapore-based CFO Shouzi Chew to also take on CEO duties at TikTok.
“It’s truly gratifying to have the opportunity to support the most creative and inspiring community out there, and to work alongside a management team that fully believes in that community,” Pappas said.
“I’m excited to deepen my partnership with Shou, and develop an even richer TikTok platform to provide people around the world a meaningful and entertaining experience.
“The TikTok journey is just beginning.”
Pappas lived in Australia until she was 20. Armed with two Masters degrees in Media from the New School and University of Queensland, she moved first to London and then New York.
In 2007 joined Next New Networks, which helped web video creators monetise their work. When YouTube bought the business in 2011, she made the transition.
That year she wrote The YouTube Creator Playbook on how they could make money on the platform, and set up its Creator Academy with tutorials on digital rights management, legal issues and advanced analytics to help their businesses.
Now 41 with two young children, she is admired by her tech colleagues and rivals for her skills in both strategy and development, and by TikTok influencers and creators for the way she treats them – especially Gen Z.
When Facebook and Instagram Reels copied TikTok, Pappas shrugged, “You can certainly copy a feature, but you can’t copy a community. I think that’s really hard to replicate.”
She is said to be data-driven with a collaborative approach to decision making, and is on Variety’s Powerful Women In Showbiz list.
The new appointments of Chew and Pappas are part of a strategic reorganisation to “optimise TikTok’s global teams” as well as support its growth, the company said.
Its global offices include Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul and Tokyo.
It opened an Australian and New Zealand office in mid-2020 in Sydney under general manager Lee Hunter and general manager for global business solutions Brett Armstrong.