Airbnb has announced that Kristen Jarvis West has joined the team as head of Executive Operations. In this newly-created role, Jarvis West will build out and manage the team for the Office of the CEO and advise the CEO on a range of strategic matters.
If you follow politics closely, you may remember her name. She worked for Michelle Obama as deputy senior advisor and director of external relations from 2009 to 2015.
When asked why she decided to take this position Jarvis West responded, “In every job I’ve ever had, I’ve chosen work that I deeply believe in. After a number of conversations with Brian Chesky, I was excited about his vision for a 21st-century company and the opportunity to champion Airbnb’s mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere,”
Jarvis West went on to tell Black Enterprise that, “Being a part of a company that has such a strong mission and core values is hard to find, and to be part of such a dynamic group of passionate people was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Airbnb has made a significant push for diverse hires over the past year. As reported previously, they brought on Cassidy Blackwell director of Strategic Projects onto Airbnb Public Affairs, Ken Chenault onto their Boards of Directors, and Danny Glover as an official Ambassador and Adviser, with many other internal hires that we have yet to cover.
Co-founder, Brian Chesky Keynote (Image: Airbnb)
This year, the company vowed to make “Airbnb for Everyone’ as stated in their new slogan, working to tackle many of the issues with diversity that presented themselves in the past. If the tech conglomerate plans to expand to 1 billion annual guests on the platform by 2028 as they have stated, they must make diversity a priority and it seems as if they are making all of the efforts to do so.