- WeWork chairman Marcelo Claure introduced four new executives at the company's all-staff meeting on Friday.
- The four men join an executive team with only one woman. Claure said diversity will be a focus in the future.
- For more stories about WeWork, click here.
WeWork's Friday all-hands meeting focused on the road ahead, and its chairman named four men who will help steer the company's stabilization efforts.
Marcelo Claure, who's also SoftBank's chief operating officer, explained the changes at Friday's meeting.
He also addressed criticisms about leadership's lack of diversity: of the 13 people currently at the top of the company, only one - chief legal officer Jen Berrent - is a woman. Claure said the company will focus on diversity in the future, adding women to the executive team and to its all-male board of directors.
WeWork has been criticized for a male-dominated, party-centric culture, with employees taking cues from ousted founder Adam Neumann. Multiple women and people of color told Business Insider in a September feature that they felt WeWork's professed culture of inclusivity didn't seem to include them.
Claure and other top executives have repeatedly emphasized that they're breaking with WeWork's past under Neumann.
WeWork's additions to the executive team also illustrate how SoftBank is increasingly taking a direct role with leadership at some of its troubled investments. Earlier this month, the Japanese investor stepped in at automotive leasing company Fair, ousting its chief executive and CFO, who was the CEO's brother, Business Insider previously detailed.
At Fair, SoftBank put operating partner Adam Hieber in the interim CEO role and named an outside executive, also a man, as CFO.
WeWork's new org chart
Below the trio are 12 direct reports, two of which - CFO and head of real estate - are still to be determined.
These are the new roles:
Chief transformation officer: Mike Bucy, who's tasked with making sure WeWork executes its six pillars. He comes from SoftBank, which he joined in 2018 after he was a partner at McKinsey. At the consultancy, he worked in North Carolina and Australia, according to his LinkedIn.
A profile on McKinsey's website highlights that Bucy "specializes in private and public sector turnarounds, often serving in interim executive roles." He has also been a real-estate investor for nearly 15 years in the southeast.
Interim chief marketing and communications officer: Maurice Levy, who's the chairman of ad and communications agency Publicis Group. Levy briefly addressed staff on Friday, wearing, like Claure, all black, according to an image viewed by Business Insider.
Levy became CEO of Publicis when he was 45 and stepped down in 2017, Business Insider previously reported. Publicis handled global ad buying for Sprint during Levy's CEO tenure; Claure was previously the CEO of Sprint. Publicis lost the Sprint business in 2017, the same year Levy stepped down as CEO.
During his time at Publicis, Levy transformed the group into one of the leading advertising agencies in the world. His last big move as CEO was the introduction of the "Power of One" strategy to get rid of silos in the group and the acquisition of agency Sapient.Nitro.
Chief product & experience officer: Ralf Wenzel, who is a managing partner at SoftBank and has "proven CEO-caliber leadership," per Claure. Wenzel spoke to employees wearing a black WeWork "do what you love" shirt, according to an image viewed by Business Insider.
Wenzel joined SoftBank in October as CEO of its Latin American tech hub, Reuters reported. Previously, Wenzel was an entrepreneur and investor. He founded Berlin-based Foodpanda, a 40-country food delivery company, and Skrill, a European electronic-wallet company.
Chief people officer: Matt Jahansouz was promoted internally to the role. He joined WeWork in February after nearly nine years in HR roles at Goldman Sachs, per his LinkedIn. He started at the bank as a vice president of talent management and ended as a managing director and global head of recruiting.
Prior to Goldman, Jahansouz spent nearly a dozen years at Deloitte, doing human capital consulting.
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