![]() Shortly after the British-born executive joined the Silicon Valley company, COVID-19 had made its way across the globe, wreaking havoc on the travel industry. This was a huge career jump for her, a leap from a large, established brand to a much newer and nimbler one. Fast forward a few months, and I just finished profiling the Airbnb exec, who was originally brought on board to run the Experiences product in January 2020 and subsequently promoted to oversee all of “global hosting,” from vacation rentals to online cookie baking and more.īefore coming to Airbnb, Powell had spent the bulk of her career at Disney’s parks division, overseeing 120,000 employees. It made the experience that much more special.Īt the time, I had no idea that this online class, one of Airbnb’s fledging new “Experiences” offerings, was part of Catherine Powell’s domain-or who she was. ![]() The host of the baking session was located in San Francisco, not far from us, but some of the other families who had joined were Zooming in from all over the world: Argentina, Switzerland, and, um, New Jersey. Not only was there less arguing, but I was into it too. Yes, I could have baked cookies with my kids on my own, but I figured they were less likely to fight over who gets to stir in the chocolate chips if a stranger was watching. Their school and daycare were shut down, the nearby playground was closed, and even flag football (my oldest daughter’s sport of choice) had gotten cancelled. But I was running out of options for keeping my three kids entertained. I’ve never really gotten into online classes, or baking for that matter. Today’s essay is courtesy of Fortune senior writer Michal Lev-Ram.Įarly on in the pandemic, not long after the Bay Area first went into shelter-in-place, I booked a virtual cookie-baking class through vacation rental site Airbnb. Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Stacey Abrams is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Fortune 500 has only had 19 Black CEOs, and we meet the woman running Airbnb’s global hosting business.
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