Pinterest has tapped former Google and Square exec Francoise Brougher to join the company as its first chief operating officer, tasking her with scaling up its global advertising offering.
She will be responsible for growing Pinterests operations around the world as well as heading up global ad sales, partnerships, measurement and business development.
The appointment from the visual bookmarking tool comes amid ongoing speculation it is gearing itself up to go public in 2019. Pinterest has yet to confirm its desire to float, with its boss Ben Silbermann saying last year that there was no timeline for an IPO as it focused instead on "building an advertising product that really worked".
Brougher brings with her over 25 years of business and operations experience to the new role. Most recently, she served as business lead for Square – the finance app founded and overseen by Twitter boss Jack Dorsey. She worked at the firm as it underwent its own IPO process in 2015, looking after Square’s growth and business operations as well as ad sales and account management.