Fidji Simo, a 10-year Facebook veteran and one of social giant’s highest-ranking women execs, is joining online grocery company Instacart as CEO.
Simo, who first joined Facebook in 2011, most recently led development and strategy for the company’s flagship app.
As head of the Facebook app, a role she assumed in March 2019, Simo managed the team supporting the core app, including News Feed, Stories, Groups, Video, Marketplace, Gaming, News, Dating and Ads. Previously, her roles at Facebook included VP of video, games and monetization, leading the team in charge of developing ad formats for mobile. She also headed the group that built and launched Facebook Live and Watch video platforms.
With Simo’s exit, Facebook has appointed Tom Alison, a longtime product and engineering exec, as head of the Facebook app.
Simo’s appointment as Instacart’s CEO is effective Aug. 2. She reports to the company’s board of directors, which she joined in January 2021. Instacart founder and current CEO Apoorva Mehta will move into a new role as executive chairman of the board.
“I believe that with Fidji at the helm we’ll be in an even stronger position to seize the incredible opportunity in front of us,” Mehta said in announcing her appointment Thursday. He also noted that Simo was at Facebook when it went public in 2012 “and understands what it takes to lead and scale a transformational company like Instacart.”
Simo, in a statement provided by Instacart, said she “fell in love with Instacart first as a customer, then as a board member, and now I’m honored to join the company as CEO and lead its next growth chapter.”
Prior to Facebook, Fidji worked at eBay from 2007-11 as part of the strategy team. She grew up in the south of France and now lives in California with her husband and daughter.
Simo holds a master of management degree from HEC Paris and spent the last year of her program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Business. She also is co-founder of Women in Product, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women in product management, advancing the careers of women in technology and advocating for equal representation in the workplace.
Instacart provides same-day delivery and pickup services in the U.S. and Canada for almost 55,000 stores in 5,500 cities. This spring, the privately held company said it hit a valuation of $39 billion after raising $265 million as part of a new financing round from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price Associates.
In another recent high-level Facebook departure, head of advertising Carolyn Everson last month said she was leaving the company after a little more than a decade.
