Uber, the popular ride-hailing service announced Dara Khosrowshahi as its new chief executive on Monday.
The company has recently dealt with a range of controversies from an internal culture of sexual harassment and discrimination, a legal tussle with tech giant, Google, a severed relationship with drivers and investors and a #DeleteUber movement that stemmed from former CEO and co-founder, Travis Kalanick’s association with US President Donald Trump. Inc.
Khosrowshahi, the 48-year-old CEO of online travel booking company Expedia is a friendly and steady hand, a savvy dealmaker, a committed defender of diversity and vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, according to those who know him. Under his watch, Expedia has become the largest online travel agency by bookings, making a number of strategic acquisitions to build a travel empire and more than doubling its revenue in four years.
He has satisfied Wall Street with a stock price that has grown more than six-fold during his 12-year tenure.
He will be saddled with saving Uber’s battered public image and restore financial stability to a company which for all its innovation, is yet to make money for its investors.
Khosrowshahi is an Iranian-born immigrant whose parents moved to the US in 1978 following the Iranian revolution. He grew up in New York with his mother and two brothers after his father was detained for six years by authorities in Iran when he went in search of his own father. He was only 13 at the time.
He graduated from Brown University in Rhode Island, United States in 1991 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. In the same year, he joined investment bank, Allen & Co as an analyst.
He worked this job for 7 years before joining USA Networks, America’s leading media and internet company now known as InterActiveCorp/IAC.
While at Allen & Co, Khosrowshahi knew of IAC Chairman, Barry Diller as a client and determined to work for him based on the monumental business choices the latter made. Khosrowshahi rose in ranks at IAC.
He went from Vice President for Strategic Planning to President for Interactive and finally became CEO of Expedia, the travel company IAC had just purchased, in 2005. Owing to his brilliance, “Expedia has grown to a $23 billion giant with a presence around the world.
Revenue has jumped from $2.1 billion in 2005 to $8.7 billion in 2016”. Having served as CEO at Expedia for more than a decade, Khosrowshahi is one of the highest paid CEOs in America. According to New York Post, “he earned nearly $95 million in compensation including stock options in 2015”.
TIME also wrote that he was the highest paid CEO of a US tech company in 2016 “having enjoyed an 88.1 percent pay rise”. Politically, Khosrowshahi has been an active and vocal opponent of President Donald Trump’s policies, especially the travel ban placed on Muslim-majority countries.
He wrote in an email to employees at the time the ban was announced, “The U.S. may be ever so slightly less dangerous as a place to live, but it will certainly be seen as a smaller nation, one that is inward-looking versus forward thinking, reactionary versus visionary”.
