Here’s who’s on the Uber board, which is backing Travis Kalanick
Uber has weathered no fewer than five scandals in the last two weeks, including allegations of sexual harassment and developing secret software to outsmart local authorities. But it doesn’t look like CEO Travis Kalanick will relinquish the reins anytime soon.
“He definitely has my confidence, he has the board’s confidence,” Arianna Huffington, a member of Uber’s board of directors, said last Friday at the YPO Edge conference in Vancouver. “I have talked to dozens of employees one-on-one, and they see, from the actions that have already been taken, that … this is not about apologies, this is not about words. This is about changes within the company — which are happening every day.”
Huffington is one of eight members who sit on Uber’s board of directors, elected as representatives of shareholders to assess the overall direction and strategy of the $70 billion ride-hailing business. It also means the board could find a way to oust Kalanick, if it wanted to, although the more likely route is hiring a chief operating officer, according to a company blog post Uber published on Tuesday.
Here’s a look at Uber’s board of power players, who either declined or didn’t respond to Yahoo Finance’s request for comment.
Arianna Huffington
Huffington remains the most high-profile member of Uber’s board, having co-founded and served as editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post news site and written 15 books, including “The Sleep Revolution.” Last November, she launched Thrive Global, a content and e-commerce site focused on “well-being” and “performance.” The Uber board member was also brought onto the investigation team formed this February to investigate claims of sexism and sexual harassment alleged by former Uber engineer Susan J. Fowler.
Ryan Graves
Believe it or not, Kalanick wasn’t always Uber’s CEO. Graves actually served a short stint as chief executive before becoming the ride-hailing company’s head of operations. In a blog post last August, Kalanick described Graves’ current role as Uber’s “resident entrepreneur and builder,” which includes “bringing his unique brand of optimistic leadership to our People Operations, helping to build uberEVERYTHING (EATS, RUSH, and others).”
Garrett Camp
Camp is Uber’s more stealthy co-founder, relatively speaking, and a serial entrepreneur whose efforts included co-founding and running StumbleUpon, the social media site focused on serendipitous content discovery, and more recently, a startup incubator called Expa.
Bill Gurley
Gurley is considered one of the top venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, with investments over the last two decades that include OpenTable, Zillow (Z), GrubHub, and the online video service Vudu, acquired by Walmart (WMT) in 2010. Gurley also spent four years as a top research analyst covering companies such as Amazon (AMZN), Dell (DVMT), Compaq and Microsoft (MSFT)