Stripe's COO Steps Into an Advisory Role

Claire Hughes Johnson, Stripe’s longtime chief operating officer who joined the company in 2014, is stepping back into an advisory role, according to reporting by The Information.

Her shift away from an operating role signals that Stripe might be prepping for a potential public listing in early 2022. Stripe took its first steps toward a direct listing back in July, when it hired a law firm to advise on legal proceedings on early-stage listing preparations.

If the fintech company does go public this year, it will be one of the stock market’s most anticipated events. Stripe was valued at $95 billion during its last fundraising round in March, but is estimated to be worth closer to $225 billion based on offers in private and secondary markets.

Of the 10 leaders in the C-suite that report directly to CEO Patrick Collison, Hughes Johnson’s departure from the COO role is definitely one of the most impactful. Her role in the org chart is now Corporate Officer & Advisor.

She spent more than a decade at Google leading the business teams for Gmail, Google Wallet and Google Apps before joining the fintech upstart in 2014. She was instrumental in building out Stripe’s leadership team and was responsible for optimizing all of the core business functions. She’s had her hand in everything from sales, to marketing, to human resources.

Her direct reports have been divided up among other executives. One such executive is Carmel Gavin, its Chief People Officer. Gavin joined Stripe from Autodesk in January 2021 with a long career working as a CHRO in several large companies such as Glassdoor and Advent Software.

A few members of Hughes Johnson’s team, particularly in human resources, have left the company as part of a talent exodus in HR. Carrie Simmonds, the Head of Organizational Development, left Stripe in October for the developer tools startup Retool. Michelle Delcambre, former Head of Global People Operations, left in October for VC firm Felicis Ventures.

Other changes happening internally at Stripe is the revitalized crypto products team, led by former Head of Engineering for Bank Products Guillaume Poncin. This a major pivot for Stripe; it ended support for Bitcoin payments in 2018 but is now taking another look into crypto as rivals like PayPal and Block have made it a primary focus.

Climate change has also become a new focus for Stripe, an unusual bet for a fintech company. But as consumers grow more conscious of the environmental impact of their dollar, creating a way to let businesses advertise as an eco-friendly company on its platform became a necessity.

Stripe launched its carbon-reducing initiative as a way to let businesses’ on its platform contribute a percentage of its revenue to tackling global warming in 2020. Senior staffer Fran Ryan has also been promoted to lead a team of additional software products geared toward tackling climate change that reports directly to Collison.