Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announced today that Arianna Huffington has joined the company’s board of directors. Huffington, editor in chief and co-founder of The Huffington Post, is already an investor in the ride-sharing company. The news comes after a month-long collaboration between Huffington and Uber to raise awareness of drowsy driving.
Current Uber Board Directors
The Uber board of directors is already made of several key industry players, including co-founder Garret Camp, former policy and communications head David Plouffe, Paul Bragiel, managing partner at i/o Ventures, and Bill Gurley, general partner at Benchmark. Other Uber executives on the board include Kalanick, and CFO Brent Callinicos.
Prior to their time with Uber, most of the directors and advisors came from a wide variety of leadership and engineering backgrounds. Plouffe managed both of Barack Obama’s election campaigns and is a former Senior Advisor to the President. Callinicos spent his time before Uber as VP, Treasurer & Chief Accountant at Google from 2007-2013.
Camp, who co-founded Uber in 2009 with Kalanick, is also the creator of the web-discovery platform StumbleUpon. The popular site and app has over 25 million users and Camp remains on their board. Prior to his time with Uber, Kalanick had created a peer-to-peer file sharing company called Red Swoosh; the company was acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2007 for $19 million.
Implications of Huffington’s Announcement
The addition of Huffington to Uber’s board of directors follows not just her work with Kalanick, but a long-time dedication to preventing drowsy driving. During her partnership with Uber, Huffington traveled across the country to speak on college campuses about the dangers of getting behind the wheel while groggy. The media mogul’s book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time, was released earlier this month and is currently #3 on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
The announcement does not come without controversy. Disability rights activists, who are already upset with Uber’s lack of handicap accessible vehicles, have spoken out against the move due to Huffington’s journalistic position.
“Arianna Huffington’s appointment to Uber’s board raises questions about whether the Huffington Post will provide objective coverage of Uber’s discrimination against wheelchair users in New York,” Dustin Jones, the founder of United for Equal Access New York, wrote in a statement. “Ms. Huffington must immediately recuse herself from any coverage of Uber or ride-sharing and the Huffington Post must work to expose Uber’s refusal to serve people in wheelchairs.”
A statement from The Huffington Post, insisted that the website would still offer neutral coverage of the ride-sharing service and that Huffington is not overly involved with the day to day running of the site.
“Arianna will be recusing herself from all of The Huffington Post’s coverage of Uber going forward,” said a spokesman.